My wife and I are both running WindowsXP Pro and have updates automatically installed. We are both running McAffee with automatic updates. On Friday we both rebooted to install windows updates. Neither of our computers will now boot up. They continually reboot. I tried to boot into safe mode with same results.
I turned off "auto restart on system failure" and get a blue screen with the error message:

Stop: c000021a{Fatal System Error} with status of 0xc000018 (0x00000000-0x00000000)

I tried to boot to the installation disk and get the same results.

Any idea what happened, and any idea on steps to take?

Hello....

I also had or have the same problem. As soon as I downloaded the latest Windows Update Online... my computer will not boot up... it keeps restarting over and over. Once I disabled the automatic restart... then I get the Fatal System Error.... Hope someone has an answer for this...

Hold, on....I see you are waiting
I need to
a) test this process I am about to propose and
b) find out what the latest CUs were....be back in 5

Insert the Windows XP startup disk in your floppy disk drive or insert the Windows XP CD in the CD drive or in the DVD drive, and then restart your
computer.


Note When you receive the following message, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD:
Press any key to boot from CD


Note Your computer must be configured to start from the CD drive or the DVD
drive. For more information about how to configure your computer to start
from the CD drive or the DVD drive, see the documentation that came with your
computer or contact the computer manufacturer.

When you receive the Welcome to Setup message, press R to start the
Recovery Console.


Note Multiple options will appear on the screen so choose the Windows XP installation in question.

You must select a number before you press ENTER, or the computer will
restart. Typically, only the 1: C:\Windows selection is available.


If you are prompted to type an administrator password, do so. If you do
not know the administrator password, press ENTER. (Typically, the password is
blank.)


You will NOT be able to continue if you do not have the administrator
password.


At the command prompt, type cd $ntuninstallKBTHE NUMBER OF THE PATCH$\spuninst, and then press ENTER.

The newest critical patches were:
KB893066
KB890923
KB892944
KB890859
KB893086

So, you will be typing

cd C:\WINDOWS\$ntuninstallKB893066$\spuninst
<ENTER>
type
spuninst.bat
<ENTER>

You need to do this for all of the patches to find out which caused the issue. Unfortunately, you cannot change directories from within these hidden directories. So, type

EXIT
<ENTER>

This will reboot the computer. You will need to go through the process several more times, inserting the following in place of the first uninstall



cd C:\WINDOWS\$ntuninstallKB890923$\spuninst
<ENTER>
type
spuninst.bat
<ENTER>
EXIT
<ENTER>


cd C:\WINDOWS\$ntuninstallKB892944$\spuninst
<ENTER>
type
spuninst.bat
<ENTER>
EXIT
<ENTER>

cd C:\WINDOWS\$ntuninstallKB890859$\spuninst
<ENTER>
type
spuninst.bat
<ENTER>
EXIT
<ENTER>

cd C:\WINDOWS\$ntuninstallKB893086$\spuninst
<ENTER>
type
spuninst.bat
<ENTER>
EXIT
<ENTER>

Word of advice...don't autoupdate. If you have kids, you wouldn't let your kids run around the bad parts of town would you? Same thing goes for your computer; never autoupdate...leaves your machine vulnerable to outside intrusion. Another thing, wait for at least 3-6 months when a new sp is released. New SP updates cause more problems than they fix, because of all of the bugs that reside within the SP update. That's why you wait a couple of months. This gives MS time to digest all of the complaints they receive from end users and IT departments threatening to uninstall their O/S. So, MS debugs the source code (something they should've done in the first place...), and rerelease the SP update, in working order...But, if you don't wanna wait, follow gerryf's instructions to restore your previous config... Unless your install was corrupted by the SP update. If that's the case, you're going to have to reinstall your O/S.

This post has been edited by ke6ziu: Apr 19 2005, 12:39 PM

Thanks for the research and your help, gerryf. I will try your suggestion.

For those following this thread, Gerry solved my problem. The only glitch was the the command spuninst.bat did not work. I noted a file in the directory called spuninst.txt, which was basically a COPY command copying the old file over the new one which had been inserted by the update.

At Gerry's suggestion I used the command: BATCH spuninst.txt, which replaced the new files with the old ones. I followed that procedure for each of the latest updates, and that took care of the problem.

Cudos to Gerry.

Steve

Just a note: For some updates, there is no *.bat file. Steve noted that in a PM of line, so credit to him for doing a little extra and observing the contents of the directory.

With no BAT file, he opened the text file and saw that it was, essentially a batch file, like this:

COPY "C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB824105$\netbt.sys" "c:\windows\system32\dllcache\netbt.sys"
COPY "C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB824105$\netbt.sys" "c:\windows\system32\drivers\netbt.sys"

The BATCH command is a recovery console-only command line tool used for stringing together multiple tasks....so, running BATCH spuninst.txt is the same as running the commands within the txt file

(you could also run them individually as COPY commands if you wanted.

So, my point is, help the people helping you by being observant.

Kudos to Steve, too!

gerry

For what it's worth... I have determined the issue referenced here, when I found it on my Sony Vaio, was caused by KB893086. That is the only fix I had to uninstall to solve the issue. Unfortunately Auto Update RE-installed it before I thought to shut it off, and re-created the issue. So that's why I'm sure that's the one.

I am curious WHY this is causing the problem, but for now I'm satisfied to have my son's machine back...

For me it was KB890859. My auto updates also reinstalled the problem update causing me to go through the procedure again. The second time I disconnected from the internet prior to doing the fix, then turned off automatic updates before reconnecting to the internet.
From now on I:
1. Set a restore point
2. Do updates one at a time, making sure I write down the KB number.

It's after four in the morning and I have identified two updates that you should probably leave alone--at least on my cousin's 2.2 Ghz Pentium box. I've installed and uninstalled and reinstalled updates one at a time, just to be sure. I haven't had a problem with KB893086 as LouALOH reported, but KB890859 is responsible for the dreaded whirligig of endless restarts and KB893066 completely disables ethernet [NIC], makes Norton Antivirus start giving repeated Email Proxy (??) error messages and everything hangs for about two minutes on restart.

Your experience may differ. I've never had any problems with windows updates until now. I don't know if they are getting sloppy, or if XP has gotten so complex that they can't anticipate how updates will perform on individual computers. This is just a standard Dell Dimension 2400, so I surmise that potentially thousands of people are affected, or infected. At first I thought it was a hardware failure, but I tested both the hard drive and the memory before I started going through the updates one at a time.

Man, what a waste of time.

Thanks all for the help here.

Jerry

This post has been edited by dxjnorto: Apr 27 2005, 04:25 AM

Thanks for the useful information guys. I wasted the best part of a day trying to figure out why I couldn't do a clean install of Windows XP Pro on my wife's Acer Ferrari 3000. Through tedious trial and error I finally confirmed that this computer also suffers from the problems identified above for the KB890859 and KB893066 updates.

I decided to register just so that I could say thanks and to add another name to the list of those impacted by this problem.

Thanks again,

Don.

I had trouble with KB890859 causing reboots all the time so i removed it,But it,s an important "hotfix" so what do we do now?

Check the "hide update" box when you do your Windows Updates and fugettaboutit.

I've run across a similar problem which may be related. First of all ke6ziu is giving very good advice, don't auto update, you're giving away control of your machine. But the problem was that two updaates don't get along, . If you install each one separately everything works fine, but with both together the system freezes up and you can't shut the computer down. For some reason Microsoft hasn't found this out and it happened on two XP machines I updated.