PC Troubleshooting Questions and Answers - Smc.exe error message

Joey writes in with a troubleshooting question:
Question:When I shut down my computer or restart it this message pops out smc.exe the instruction at "0x00536e1" referenced memory "0x0000000" The memory could not be read. Why does this happen?

Answer: It looks like smc.exe is crashing or not stopping properly when you shut down or restart your computer. Smc.exe is a part of the Sygate Secure Enterprise firewall software package. Do you have this running on your computer? If so you can try to remove it and reinstall it or just remove it completely if you trust the Windows XP firewall that comes with SP2.
 
As a test you can look in your startup items using msconfig and see if there is an item that references smc.exe and uncheck it. You will probably have to reboot twice to see if it worked. Keep in mind that unchecking this will most likely disable your Sygate firewall. 

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