I bit the bullet Friday and reimaged the hard drive. Fortunately, there wasn't much on the laptop that wasn't backed up.
Paul Hachmeyer  

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From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hachmeyer, Mr. Paul S. [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 3:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] xp bsod STOP:  c000021a (fatal system error)

A friend brought me his Dell Latitude D610 laptop which gets this error when booting.  I can't get into safe mode or any other option, whichever I select, once it starts xp, it craps out.  If I try to select another boot device, I can't get to the cd drive selection, seems like his 'down' key is broken, and the 'up' key doesn't wrap to the bottom of the boot selection list.  Options on the web suggest reinstalling or repairing xp, but I can't get the cd drive selected.
I'm not sure what sp is installed, can't get in to check that.  Seems to have been a few os program glitches over the years with xp that might cause this message.  There is no Norton or Symantec software installed (backup apparently was another problem causing this message), and the memory chip was popped out and replaced, since sometimes that causes the error.
Any ideas?
Paul Hachmeyer

         
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