IT Professionals

Blue Screen Error In Vista

Posted by on Aug 23, 2007 | 2 Comments

Today, Tom asks:

I thought XP errors were annoying! Matt, I cannot seem to get around this error on Vista no matter what I try. The error is this. STOP: c000021a (Fatal System Error). Can you help me with this blue screen? I am about ready to take you up on the suggestion of a System76 PC as you recommended previously as Vista is clearly not ready for prime time. Oh, and did you ever get that Bluetooth dongle driver for Vista working?

Tom

Hi Tom, no to the Bluetooth dongle for Vista, even though it works with no ‘driver installs’ from me on Ubuntu Edgy and the ‘Vista ready driver’ is claimed to work, just not by real users apparently. There is a new Bluetooth utility in Feisty I believe however, that makes this even easier. Anyway, moving on…

For that error, I did some research and it appears to be an error with Winlogon.exe itself. Apparently, Microsoft feels that using…are you ready for this – Dr. Watson, is the best way to handle this. Okay, now once we all stop laughing at how retro that felt, let’s look into some usable fixes.

Much like in Windows XP, you can try F8 then “last configuration that worked”. If things get really sticky, you might even consider using your Windows Vista start-up disk (hopefully you have one) and follow these instructions. Short of that, let’s see what the rest of the Gnomies suggest in the comments, short of rolling back to XP of course.

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!”

Also, don’t forget to check out “Just Ask Matt,” Linux Edition!

[tags]blue screen, Windows, OS X, Linux[/tags]

  • Tom DeLora

    Get XP PRO and get over it. It ain’t fixable.

  • Louis

    I get the BSoD at random intervals regardless of what I’m doing at the time. If I’m lucky enough fr the BSoD to stay there long enough to read, the error message is always different. The only two I managed to read were “attempt to write to Read-Only Memory” and “IRQL_NOT_LESSER_NOT_GREATER.” No idea what those are, but, any help would rock. Could running a system made for USA power of 110v 60hz on Japan’s 110v 50hz be an issue? I haven’t had this many problems with desktops in any other country. My last computer running XP Media Center Edition SP 2 (built by ibuypower.com) did the same thing as this one I built myself.