Help! Had a power failure, now XP Home won't boot! Also a LSASS problem (not virus)

[ANegative]

This is a long story.

My computer shut down due to a power failure. When I restarted it, Windows could not start up. Everything was fine, but when I got to the XP loading screen, it would restart the computer endlessly. I had a few options, which were to restart as normal, restart in safe mode, or to restart from Last Known Good Configuration. None of these worked.

I was worried about my files, so I got an HDD enclosure from newegg, and transferred the important files to the computer that I'm using now. Then I formatted, thinking that I could re-install XP. I did this, it got the files from the CD and everything, but when it came the last few steps (you know, the ones right after you have to restart your computer), it started to load XP again, but a small dialog box said LSASS.EXE - OPERATION FAILED. After this, AGAIN it would keep restarting the computer.

Sony Vaio, model VGCRB30, two 512MB RAM sticks and two 256MB ones. Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 2 (at least, it used to be until I formatted

[w1che]

In most cases this problem is caused by a virus but that shouldn't be the case here since you did a reformat. Another thing that can cause this error is the computer name being to long.. I would just do another format & start over again since you can't boot into any mode..

[ANegative]

Originally Posted by w1che

In most cases this problem is caused by a virus but that shouldn't be the case here since you did a reformat. Another thing that can cause this error is the computer name being to long.. I would just do another format & start over again since you can't boot into any mode..

Computer name being too long? How so? And are there any other things it could be? I want to cover all my bases at this point, because this is driving me crazy.

[ANegative]

Wow, thanks a lot for the help.