BSOD 96 (PROCESS_INITIALIZATION_FAILED): causes and diagnosis

Status / error code:		Category:

Constant name:
Source:		Operating System:
Description: PROCESS_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

Could be also:
Constant	Type	OS
EPFNOSUPPORT	errno	Linux
ENODATA	errno	Mac
EDESTADDRREQ	errno	Solaris

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SECURITY_INITIALIZATION_FAILED	HAL1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

PROCESS_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

PROCESS_INITIALIZATION_FAILED is bug check 0x60. Microsoft's individual reference says the code appears very infrequently and does not publish parameter meanings or a named process whose failure can be inferred from the symbolic name.

Do not guess the failing process

The word PROCESS is not enough to conclude that a user application, service, or a specific Windows process caused the stop. Use the crash dump to see the initialization path, current thread, stack, and loaded modules. For this sparsely documented code, !analyze -v is the supported starting point.

Useful comparison data

Record all four bug-check arguments even though Microsoft does not document their public semantics.
Compare the exact Windows build and recent boot or system-component changes across repeated failures.
Keep this code separate from the SESSION1-SESSION5 initialization family and from CRITICAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE; those are distinct stop values with different published descriptions.

References

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