laptop dead???

Have a dell inspiron laptop with vista. Its a few years old.

In last few days when you turn computer on, it first goes to the black screen windows error recovery, then runs repair, which results in windows starting to load but then a blue screen with the following message:

Stop: c000021a fatal system error
The session manager failed to create protected prefixes system process terminated unexpectedly with a status shutdown of Oxc000003a

Any ideas how to fix this if possible. Most of tech support website on this error are very complicated to say the least

I'd start here anyway: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156669

Thanks. One of the first steps is at the command prompt, what or where is this?

All i get right now is a brief load up of microsoft followed by the windows error recovery page.