lsass.exe System Shutdown Error

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lsass.exe System Shutdown Error

As you may have noticed I wasn’t able to post a newsletter earlier this week as I had planned. This was down to my computer deciding it was time to self-destruct! Let me give you a bit of background information, and then let me show you what I did to fix this annoying error.

It all started on Monday when we had an un-expected power cut. The computer was turned on at the time so when the power went off, so did the computer! When I booted back up everything went as normal, the obligatory windows Disk Check ran, but then to my horror the computer decided to turn itself off, no warnings, it was just like someone ripped the power cord out of the socket!

I tried again and the same process happened, this time I got my digital camera out and decided to take some pictures of the error. This is what I saw, please ignore the bad screens, I forgot to turn off the flash on my camera!

lsass.exe System Shutdown Error

The above error message reads lsass.exe – Operation Failed
Then underneath it says: The requested operation **long code here**

After about two seconds the computer shuts itself down, well it doesn’t really shuts down it’s more like a “power down”.

So my next step was to boot up in safe mode, I’m using Windows XP home by the way! All was going well until I got past the windows boot screen and then I got the following BSOD (Blue screen of death)

Blue Screen of Death

And here is a condensed version

BSOD error

Again, the flash has messed up the picture but in short it said:

“The Video Driver Failed To Initialize”

So back I went, I tried all of the F8 options – boot in safe mode, enable boot logging, disable automatic shutdown etc but nothing worked. I was still getting the lsass.exe every time I tried to boot up. In the end I booted from my Windows XP CD and tried a reinstall/repair but the computer closed down before the CD had a chance to run!

I don’t like been beaten by a computer but this one almost managed to get one over on me, as a last desperate attempt I booted up and then plugged in my external USB had drive when the following screen appeared

Windows Logon Screen

After the XP logo had gone away the screen went black, I was expecting another lsass.exe shutdown but to my surprise I had made it to the blue “Windows is Starting Up” screen!

I was delighted, finally I thought I had managed to log back on, but then this happened:

Preparing Network Connections Error

As soon as the “Preparing Network Connections” text appeared the computer shut down, again, when I say shutdown I mean the power went but you know what I mean 😉

I tried a few more times with the hard drive plugged in – it’s a Freecom FHD 320GB external USB drive if any of you are taking notes! Each time I would get past the lsass.exe failed to initialize screen but when it went onto the preparing network connections screen BOOM, off the computer went.

The next time I booted up the blue Windows check disk screen ran, I let it run but when it was finished it powered down again. I started back up and inserted the USB disk drive, to my amazement I made it back to the windows login screen, I was able to log back onto the computer and everything was running perfectly.

The computer now boots up as normal, I just hope we don’t have any more power cuts anytime soon!

I have now made a backup of everything, I also ran my anti-virus scanners, I use NOD32, Comodo Firewall and Spybot. None of these found anything out of the ordinary so I did a quick search on google and came up with XoftSpy, it’s free to download/scan your PC and it found a lot of errors in my registry and it also found a few bits of Malware that the others didn’t pick up, but more worryingly it also found a Worm that logged Keystrokes! You can see a screenshot of all the errors below, it found over 300 in total so I would defiantly recommend giving your PC a free scan. (Click here)

Good anti-spy software

After I had removed the items using XoftSpy the computer seems to be back to normal, I will just have to wait until our next power cut to see if the lsass.exe error decides to rear its ugly head again.

So in short, this is what I did to get back onto my PC after the lsass.exe system shutdown problem:

1. Boot up the computer and get Windows to run the Disk check (the one with the blue screen)

2. Plug in an external hard drive after the windows loading screen has run

3. Cross your fingers!

As I said this has worked for me, I hope it will help you do the same. Please leave me a comment if you have had the same error and what you did to fix it!

Thanks for reading,
Dan




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Comments

13 Responses to “lsass.exe System Shutdown Error”
  1. Colin says:

    Hi Dan,

    Xoftspy is brilliant, it’s the only program that I have willingly purchased as I blog about PC & personal privacy. Many more at my site, all tried and tested and they keep me secure.

    Everyone should consider and external back-up drive, it is only too easy to lose it all otherwise.

    Glad you’re back, have a great week.
    Regards
    cotojo

  2. Dan (el_passo) says:

    I agree Colin, to be honest I tried it as a last resort when my other virus programs didn’t come up with anything.

    I was surprised at what it found, it’s now sitting on my Desktop ready for action!

  3. Jason says:

    hi dan

    Xoftspy as spyware in it you need a good virus program and a good Firewall

    zonealrm is a good Firewall and spybot is good adware se. is good adware

    program spywareblaster is good spyware blocker

    and avast is a good virus program it as netgard in it.

    and a good system cleaner

    lsass.exe they was a virus with the same name out microsoft did a fix on it

    lsass.exe is a microsoft runing service

    hope this help you dan if you need more help or more info email me.

    as i owned a computer shop now am looking i.m i new to it .

  4. Dan (el_passo) says:

    Hi Jason,
    Thanks for the info.

    As far as I know lsass.exe is to do with authenticating the Windows logon process, it was also used by the Sasser worm which causes your PC to shut down, but it displays a 30 second warning telling you it will be shut down. I had the virus on a laptop of mine, did the windows patch and it was fine, so I know it isn’t that on this machine.

    As for my anti-virus setup, I have:

    NOD32 Anti-Virus
    Comodo Pro Firewall
    Spybot S&D
    Xsoft Antispyware
    Asquared Malware Scanner

    So in theory I should be protected upto the eyeballs 🙂

  5. John says:

    Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I logged off my laptop and the next time I tried to use it I had that virtual memory, lsass.exc failure and your solution worked. I plugged in my memory stick and like a charm went right to the login screen and now I will be running all the spy ware stuff suggested in your blog.

  6. Dan (el_passo) says:

    No problem John. I found out the “Plug in external drive” fix by accident but it sure is useful!

  7. John says:

    You may know this and if not no big but I have a Sony Vaio and while putting my son to bed last night he pushed the on/off button and since then it boots to one of two spots. Most recently I have “The last attempt to restart the system from its previous location failed. Attempt to restart again?” Where in it gives me two options to Delete Restoration data and proceed to system boot menu or continue with system restart.

    Either would be acceptable solutions but the keyboard is unresponsive. The only key that has any apparent value is the on/off switch.

    The other response the computer gives upon restart is the VAIO, Intel, Phoenix, page and then will get a black screen that will sit there for hours.

    I have tried to boot with an x/p startup disk from my other computer but again it asks “Press any key to boot from disk” but any key is not specific enough because it does not respond.

  8. Dan (el_passo) says:

    Hmm, that sounds like a tricky one.

    I’ll be honest, I’m more of a software man than a hardware man so I don’t really have any ideas, to me it doesn’t sound like there is much you can do if the keyboard isn’t functioning, maybe if you have a USB keyboard you could plug that in and see if it will work? (Although that may bring back the lsass.exe error)

    Failing that, try ringing Sony support, if your laptop is still under warranty they should be able to sort it for you one way or another.

  9. Krystine says:

    Hi.. i have the same problem

    .. i don’t have an external hard drive so i won’t be able to do that.. instead i installed another windows XP and i didn’t delete my previous windows XP.. i am now running the second windows XP.. i hate to reformat my drive and reinstall the programs.

    i hope by downloading the said antispyware it will clean up my hard drive and i’ll be able to load the other windows xp..

  10. houarri says:

    Search for sasser and Blaster worms here and fix the problem with tools

    http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/removaltools.jsp

  11. Alexis says:

    Hi! Dan. I am having problem with lsass.exe. I have found this spyware or whatever they called which caused problem to my laptop. And I was trying to delete this file but failed. When I restart my windows, my laptop went into black screen with white mouse cursor can be moved around.
    I tried all the safe mode, safe mode with command prompt and last known configurations …. all can’t open to see my windows again.
    Is there any way you can help me? Thank you!!!

    • Dan (el_passo) says:

      Hi Alexis,
      If you can’t get onto the machine in safe mode then you are pretty screwed, the best option would be to go into your computers BIOS (have a google for your computer make and it’ll tell you how to get into it) and set the boot media as the CD/DVD drive and then insert your boot disk/windows CD and you’ll be able to reinstall windows. You’ll lose your data but at least you’ll have a working machine again.

      In future, it’s always best to take regular system backups and then if something like this does happen you wont lose all of your data:

      https://elpassoblog.com/how-to-make-a-full-pc-backup-and-restore-after-hard-drive-failure/