Re: lsass.exe-system error
Good News everybody!
After suffering from a (seemingly catastrophic) fatal: "lsass.exe - System Error, Object Name not found" boot msg, I was able to successfully recover the OS and get my PC back up & running again! (even without an XP install CD)!
Here's how I did it:
On a separate machine, I navigated over to Microsoft's website and looked into the details of creating a set of Windows XP Setup boot disks. I found all the necessary information here: (
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310994 ). Since my home PC (the one with the lsass.exe error) was running XP Home Edition with SP1, the "winxpsp1_en_hom_bf.exe" file was appropriate for me. That program generated six (6) floppy disks which I subsequently used to boot up my XP Home machine and get into the "Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" mode as described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307654 "Recovery Console" mode is a DOS-like mode with limited access to the Windows directory system files (it supports FAT & NTFS file formats, but file access is limited to only the "root" OS sub-folders. User data files are not accessible in "Recovery Console" mode).
OK, now that I was able to boot from the floppies (and access the OS system files), I pretty much followed all the details presented by Charlie White as described in his article "Windows XP crashed? Here's help" (quick-link here:
http://www.tunexp.com/faqs/windows_xp_crashed_heres_help/ ).
In summary, the instructions he provides allow you to effectively perform a manual system restore on your machine.
So, now in the future, if your machine fails on boot-up, don't fret! First try to force a "manual system restore"... If all goes well, you should have your machine back up/running in no time!
Good luck!
Russ
N.B. All the details in Charlie White's article are correct except a small detail in Part 1 where you grab the original system repair files out of the "c:\windows\repair" subdirectory: Specifically, on my machine, the "c:\windows\repair\system" file was actually called "c:\windows\repair\system.bak" (note the ".bak" suffix). As such, the line where he says to
"copy C:\windows\repair\system C:\windows\system32\config\system",
should actually read:
"copy C:\windows\repair\system.bak C:\windows\system32\config\system"
