Error message: "Login process has failed to create the security options dialog"

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a one-year-old HP Pavilion desktop. 2G of Ram, 250G Hard drive. It randomly locks up.Thescreen goes blank, the mouse cursor is visible and movable but I cannot right click and get any anything to happen. When I hit ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager, nothing happens for several minutes and then I get (sometimes) an error message Titled:

Login process has failed to create the security options dialog

With a dialog message of:

Failure - Security Options



At that point the only remedy is a hard shutdown. This happens sometimes 2-3 times a day. When it reboots the incident does not appear in the event log. Oh yes, when this happens, the hard drive tends to wheeze and whirr likes its having a heart attack.



There are references to this on the internet, and I saw one on the Vista 64 forum, but I have yet to see any real causes or solutions advanced. One person indicated he had gotten rid of the problem by putting in a new hard drive, but this seems drastic to me since there is no other evidence that the hard drive is bad.



If anyone has an answer to this, I will be very grateful.

I started having the same problem yesterday. I originally thought it was a virus or trojan, but scans have turned up nothing. Additionally, program starts are very slow or not at all with no errors produced. Most programs won't launch, and no errors are returned. Those that do start take minutes. I see references to this in other forums, but no definitive solutions.



-Larry

Ok, here's how I fixed it: I backed my machine out to a previous restore point. I think the problem was caused by a Symantec internet security patch. I uninstalled it all (it came on the machine) and went to another solution. Works much better. Also had some indications that it might have been a corrupted sidebar applet, but I was eventually able to get the sidebar to stop trying to load, with no improvement.



You can gain insight into what's happening by F8'ing into the boot menu and doing a logged boot. Let it run for a while- 20-30 minutes, and then look at the file ntboot.log in C:/windows. About 1/3 of the drivers were failing to load on my box. Prior to figuring this out, I was able to get a clean shut down and get some programs working by shutting it down before it complete loading everything after the boot.



-Larry P

Arizona

Are you running Windows Defender? If so, have you tried disabling that to see if it improves the situation? Asking because I keep seeing more postings on Windows Defender being involved in wierd lockup problems.

I did try that without success. I also tried Larry's solution which involved rolling the restore point back to a time before it started doing it. That didn't work either---although I may not have rolled it back far enough--that's my next step. McAfee suggested that I uninstall and reinstall their anti-virus suite, so I'm going to try that too. I'll let you all know if any of this works. it's been very frustrating. I do appreciate your replies and efforts to help. best wishes--chuck

I picked up this problem having installed AVG and ThreatFire, uninstalling them both (at the same time so I didn't identify the culprit) from safe mode was the only the thing that fixed it for me, after much rebooting and other juggling startup apps. So, judging by the other posts its some sort of security issue with the software.

I'm having this problem too. I tried doing a system restore back to where i was certain this problem was not occurring. But that didn't help. I am running Norton Internet Security 2007. I'm going to try removing that next. Anyone else have any other solutions?

Saw some info on this where Western Digital drives were failing and causing this problem. They downloaded and ran S.M.A.R.T. utilities from WD, discovered the problem, replaced the drive -- and the problem vanished.



Also saw some posts claiming this was fixed by removing AVG and another post where the person claimed it was Symantec LiveUpdate causing the problem.



Since you're using NIS, perhaps the last problem is the one of interest.

I too have this problem, but it started after I installed Threatfire. I'm going to try uninstalling it now- keep you guys posted.



Edit: Uninstalling solved the problem immediatlly! YAY

I have the same problem, but nothing else seems to fit.



I turned my computer off last night (didn't install anything new, or make any changes), and this morning it froze when I tried putting my password in. I restarted my computer and then nothing was showing on the screen, even the bios. So I checked all the internal computer components and everything was running fine, I reset the bios via removing the battery and the my computer started up again. I was able to log in, (albeit 3-4 times slower) and then encountered the problems people have been facing. Every 30 seconds a program will lag, and then say (not responding) and then after a minute or so will go back to working normally. Some programs will not even open. I tried defragmenting my hd first, but after 4 hours that too froze. After it freezing and a few more restarts, I can now only start my computer up in safe mode. I tried a "sfc /scannow" in cmd and that finished and said it had found and corrected errors in system files, after that I attempted to do a system restore, but that got stuck in the initialization phase. I'm now trying to do a system restore off my vista disk, and it's being extremely slow, but hopefully it will work.



my computer is a custom build tower:

- 2gb ram

- 2.8 ghz pentium d

- nvidia 8600 gts

- vista hd - WD 250gb

- 2nd hd - 320gb Seagate

- Asus p5n-sli mobo