JSI Tip 5456. 'The system process LSASS.EXE terminated unexpectedly with status code -1073741571'?

You receive:

The system process LSASS.EXE terminated unexpectedly with status code -1073741571. The system will now shut down and restart.

If you restart in Safe Mode, you may receive a message similar to:

Svchost.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log will be created.

This behavior is symptomatic of a corrupted Winsock2 registry key.

To fix the problem:

1. Open a CMD prompt.

2. using REG.EXE on Windows 2000, from the Windows 2000 Support Tools,
or REG.EXE built into Windows XP, Copy / Paste each of the following lines into the CMD Window and execute it:

REG DELETE HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesWinSock2 /f

REG DELETE HKLMSYSTEMControlSet001ServicesWinSock2 /f

REG DELETE HKLMSYSTEMControlSet002ServicesWinSock2 /f

REG DELETE HKLMSYSTEMControlSet003ServicesWinSock2 /f

NOTE: You may receive a 'not found' error on one or more of these commands.

3. Shutdown and restart your computer.

NOTE: In Windows XP, I would use a Restore Point prior to the corruption.