TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Late last year (sometime a little before Christmas) I got this error:

lsass.exe - System Error "Security Accounts Manager initialization failed because of the following error: The handle is invalid. Error Status: 0xc0000008. Please click OK to shutdown the system and reboot into Safe Mode, check the event log for more detailed information."

Seeing how restarting the system in Safe Mode resulted in the same, I searched for a solution. I failed at that and settled for using the system recovery disks that were provided with the laptop (HP Pavilion ze5170 I think.)

Well, everything worked fine until last night when I shut it down. I woke up to find the same error. Crossing my fingers, I used the recovery disks again and updated Windows after it was reinstalled. When I restarted my computer, I got this very same error.

So, any solutions? Or should I desperately recover my system for a third time and attempt to manually fix whatever file corruption is causing this?

Edit: The only significant change to the system that I can think of was that it happened after the second restart after downloading and installing a windows patch (after the installation, the prompt asks for a restart. After that restart, when the system was restarted the error appears.) This may just be something that does not involve this, but any other information helps, I guess.

You could try the following, it might work. If it does I would suggest checking the hard disk for errors and running a RAM check using something like MemCheck. Check the documentation for the computer as manufacturers often include some hardware diagnostic utilities.

Using any XP Home or Professional installation disk ( can be borrowed from someone else if you don't have one ) boot from the CD.
When asked, go to the recovery console.
Follow the instructions to log into your windows installation. The administrator they are referring to is the built-in administrator user account. By default there is no password unless you gave it one.
At the C:\Windows command prompt type the following instructions:

cd system32\config <enter>
ren sam sam.old <enter>
(if the system cannot find this file, don't worry, just continue)
copy c:\windows\repair\sam <enter>

Reboot.

An Microsoft article for a similar issue can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316751

Good Luck.

Thanks.

The problem now is there is a password on the system and, being a second-hand computer, it is rather hard to find that out.

Would it be feasible to recover the system (again, at least I didn't have much more on it than AIM and FireFox) and do a procedure while in Windows?

Yes, you certainly go about doing a complete system restore from the recovery disks.

If you are connected to the internet via cable or dsl make sure the ethernet cable is disconected. You haven't mentioned your operating system (xp or 2000) but you should have a functioning firewall before you connect to the internet and if you have xp, get SP2 on there as soon as possible.

Good luck and do the hardware check as soon as possible.

I'm working on XP.

Fortunately, I think I've fixed it, but I'm still a bit wary each time I start up Windows.