Application failed to initialize properly

My next door neighbor has encountered a problem with his system.

WinXP Media Edition SP2 with all current windows updates.
Norton AV up to date.
SpySweeper up to date.

When booting the machine, a black screen appears with a Windows error
box as follows:

lsass.exe The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)

click OK and it is followed by:

services.exe The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)

click OK and the two errors repeat.

After clicking OK on the second services.exe error, the screen remains
black with a working mouse cursor (arrow).

Cannot boot into any type of "Safe Mode" (same errors) or last good
configuration.

No software or hardware have been installed recently.

I have googled this and have found a number of pages referring to
similar situations but not the identical scenario (different exe files
or different 0xc number).

The articles that I have read cover everything from a Sasser infection,
a corrupt password store, to "the only way to fix this is to reformat
and reinstall", to "repair windows and reinstall all the service packs".

I really don't think it is a Sasser infection.

Before I do anything drastic, I thought I'd seek some wisdom from the
group.

Thanks in advance.
FML

 

Found this...
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=816213

 

Unk spewed forth...

Thanks for the reply. However, there is no custom or VB WMI process
involved in this. Until today, the system was working flawlessly. No new
software or hardware have been added.

 

In the black screen you cannot hit control alt delete to get task manager?
If so then try to run some programs from there.
Also, download the stinger on another machine onto a floppy disk and use it
on the machine in question and see what happens. Try the same with avasts
scanner-put on a floppy and run.

--
He released government from the restraint of law.
____Lord Acton on Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), George W. Bush, and
the Straussian neocons

Ellis_Jay

 

My aunt has exactly the same problem with her PC since 2 days.
I was able to do a repair-install from windows XP CD-rom after which everything seemed to work fine again. Howerever... after having downloaded and installed IE 8 the computer did it's usual restart to complete the installation, and, to my horror, the same errors appeared when re-booting.

Has anyone figured out yet what the solution is to this problem? The above posts do not give a clear answer..:-(

Hope you can help me out. Thanks guys!

 

My friend now also has this same exact problem. It doesn't matter where I look for answers, everyone tells me to run cmd prompt, or to use task manager. The problem though, is that you can't run anything. It freezes on a black screen just as described above. My friend's machine is a Netbook, so it doesn't have a CD-ROM either. Nothing seems to work...does anyone out there have any answers yet???