not sure how many S's mate, but i doubt its a worm (could be tho!)

actually this happened to me again the other day.. YOW!!

but on this occasion i had been prudent enough to have saved copies of email accounts, address books, bookmarks and i was able to copy off the other files using linux (again, sigh) and had to re-open the can of whup-***!!

so i formatted the drive and i'm back to square on, just running stuff on a daily basis. its almost easier these days, with the experience, to just reformat than fix. grr.

i've gone a little further now and i'm not storing anything on C:\ that i can get away with.

so i'm gonna give this a try...

i bought this off ebay..

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Compact-Flash...3A1%7C294%3A50

and i'm gonna buy this..

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....m=280354152707

and i'm just gonna run windows from the 16GB CF card and store anything else externally.

finally i just wonder if you think it might be anything to do with my version of windows. i use a stripped out version of XP i got from the internet called performance edition.

basically its a stripped out version and doesnt have anything you dont need. you can check the latest version on torrentreactor here http://www.torrentreactor.net/torren...-April-2009-V2

ok.. i've blabbed on for far too long now but i'll post a separate thread about the flash hard drive.

cheers, saiyan

Kingston makes very good products. Keep us up-to-date on how it goes.

LSASS.EXE AGAIN ~ YAARRGHHH!! this is like the third time this year with the same issue. its driving me insane because its really random. last night the computer was absolutely fine, this morning, error message ~ no startup. its starting to annoy me!

so, where to from here? maybe a different copy of windows?

so now my kingston arrived two days ago ~ so here we go!!

LSASS.EXE is a vital Windows program that you should not remove. It has to do with validating user passwords at startup, so viruses often attack this program or its .DLL files.
When do you get this error message?
Have you run a virus scan? Which anti-virus software(s)? See if that fixes it?
Might be time to give C Cleaner a try.
Or run System File Checker.

thanx for the reply 'Squiggly'..

the only problem with this particular error is that once i get the error message (http://i32.tinypic.com/2ik6scp.jpg) blah blah then the OS doesnt go any further and goes into a cycle of restart/error/restart.

so i'm unable to get in to make any changes or repairs.

i appreciate you taking the time and if you have any more on this i'd be super grateful!

cheers, the saiyan!

I would run a virus scan on the drive. Not sure your level of computer expertise, but this can be done with a USB to SATA/EIDE adapter to connect to a second computer, or by connecting the drive to a 2nd computer as a slave or second drive.
If a virus cleaning doesn't work then hit F8 (most PC's) at startup to see if you can start with the command prompt to do a system file checker, then try last known good configuration.
I'm not sure if a corrupted password itself would cause this. Probably not. Probably the lssas program itself. Just to be sure you could try resetting your log on password with NT Registry & Password Editor. It's an offline program (freeware) that boots from CD at startup.
If you still can't get to the desktop, then try a repair install. Often a repair install doesn't fix these things. Then you're left with nothing but to reinstall Windows.

If you have the Sasser worm then here's Microsoft's removal tool http://www.microsoft.com/security/ma...e/default.aspx

Check the Event Viewer for any Error that corresponds to the time of this message:

Start> Run> type in eventvwr

Do this on each the System and the Applications logs:[list]
[1]. Click to open the log>
[2]. Look for the Error>
[3] .Right click on the Error> Properties>
[4]. Click on Copy button, top right, below the down arrow >
[5]. Paste here (Ctrl V)
[6].NOTES

• You can ignore Warnings and Information Events.
• If you have a recurring Error with same ID#, same Source and same Description, only one copy is needed.
• You don't need to include the lines of code in the box below the Description, if any.
• Please do not copy the entire Event log.

Errors are time coded. Check the computer clock on at message time.

[QUOTE][finally i just wonder if you think it might be anything to do with my version of windows. i use a stripped out version of XP i got from the internet called performance edition.

basically its a stripped out version and doesnt have anything you dont need. you can check the latest version on torrentreactor here http://www.torrentreactor.net/torren...2009-V2/QUOTE]

From the TorrentReactor site:
Do you have a pirated version? Downloading an operating system from a file sharing site wouldn't be anything I'd encourage.

guys, thanx for all your tips, ideas and support!

i'm going O/S for a couple of weeks tomorrow so i'm not gonna be able to get onto this til i get back.. bar a bit of bludging on the packing that is ( i doubt the missus'd be too happy!).

but i'll get onto it for sure then..

x

i think it may have all come down to a dodgy HDD.

i blasted the hard drive and reinstalled windows. and within about 3 days i couldnt connect to the internet. kept getting the message...

"the network did not assign your computer a network address"

and it was doing this infrequently before.

so i've gone back to the original HDD i got with the laptop and two weeks later have had no troubles, no internet connection issues and no lsass.exe probs either.

just for those keeping an eye out for it.. i got an adapter and used a 16GB CF card instead of a hard drive just for testing purposes.

i dont know if i'm doing something wrong but it took me like a full day to install windows and about 10minutes to install just about anything on it. i woulda thought it woulda been faster than that.

when up and running it works fine but a bit slow.. any ideas?