My daughter has an ACER laptop running Windows XP. The machine is 5 years old. During startup, an error box shows up stating"lsass.exe - Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API"

Pressing OK results in the machine shutting down and restarting.

Any help in diagnosing what is going on would be much appreciated.

Welcome to D-A-L.

How much free space is on the hard drive (partition)?

As I recall, the hard drive was 60G total, split between a C and a D drive. As this computer was used at university, there is not likely a lot of spare space.

But as I can't get past the basic logon screen, I can't confirm this (I haven't yet tried logging in via safe mode to see if I can bypass the error??)

Try booting into Safe Mode, with no extra support (internet etc).

Post back with the findings.

Safe mode logon seems to work OK. No error messages and the desktop icons are as expected.

There are some interesting possibilities: Isass.exe system error--XP won't boot - Page 8 - Tech Support Forums - TechIMO.com in this thread:

Try booting to Safe Mode again, then click on Start then Run, type services.msc and press Enter.
Scroll down to IPSec Services and double click on it.
Set Startup type to Disable then Apply and OK

Boot normally and see if the problem is fixed.

IPSec's primarily a host authentication device used with data transfer and encryption operations on a domain. Not needed on a home system in a WORKGROUP.

It's possible you have a space issue. Try freeing up some space on both drives.

Two good (free) "clean-up" programs are;

CCleaner - Download
(Click on Download from FileHippo......, in the PayPal box)

When the next window opens, click "Download Latest Version" on the right of the page.

Alternate Download;
|MG| CCleaner Slim 2.24.1010 Download

Once you download and install it, open the program then click on (left hand side) OPTIONS, then COOKIES. Any cookies you want to save (trusted sites, places you have usernames/passwords), highlight them in the left column, then (using the directional arrows between the panes), move them to the right hand column under "Cookies to keep".

Still under Options, click on Advanced. Remove the check mark from the box for "Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours".

Leave all other settings at the default.

Then click on Cleaner (on the top left). When that window opens, click on Run Cleaner (bottom right of the window.)

When it finishes, close CCleaner, and restart your machine. (Some files will not be deleted until a restart is performed.)

I do not advocate running CCleaner on each boot. I run it once or twice a week.


RegSeeker
Open it, click on Clean The Registry, then OK.

Once it's finished, along the bottom of the screen, click on Select, choose "Select All". Then click on Action, then "Delete selected items".

All deleted items will be backed up, just click OK for the default backup filenames/locations.

Close the program and restart the machine.

Post back with your results and any further questions.

Ztruker

Followed instructions but on normal boot up, I have a black screen!!! Even when trying to boot into safe mode, nothing but black.

Dan

The drives are very full, but at this point, I can't get back in to clean them up.

Is Safe Mode not working any longer?

Unfortunately not.

On power-on, I get a couple of seconds of fan sound, then nothing.