The worst thing that can happen to you when you are working on your computer is to have it crash on you. All you work is lost and God knows what has happened to all the data you have stored in your computer. The next worse thing that can happen to you is to get an error message. This usually portends some kind of serious problem that can cause you a lot of headaches and loss of time in getting them fixed. And then there are some error messages that just cannot be explained with any certainty.

Often a specific error message will appear when a certain application is being run. A common problem on laptops when using the Fast User Switch is receiving an error message that says: "The Logon User Interface DLL vrlogon.dll failed to load. Contact your system administrator to replace the DLL, or restore the original DLL." Or words to that effect. When you have the vrlogon.dll problem, you can't log in to your system through the normal XP log in procedure and this becomes a major hassle.

Now you know you have a problem, but no information has been given to you on how to fix it. Perhaps that's because there is no definitive information available. Most of us are not computer experts who would like to risk tampering with the computer's operating system. And even if we could, there still does not seem to be a clear cut solution.

The vrlogon.dll problem seems to occur mainly with IBM / Lenovo computers and could be caused by a malfunction in the fingerprint reading software.

Many people advise using the msconfig or regedit commands. But this does not always work and often the CSSAUTH.EXE file or the other relevant programs cannot be found.

Many folks look to the internet for help and do a search for vrlogon.dll. The problem here is that they will find a huge amount of results, with a huge number of different reasons for the problem and an equally large number of solutions. Most of these solutions are beyond the scope of the layman who does not want to risk damaging his system further. Two common solutions, which do not always work are to reboot the computers from a previous configuration or replacing the userinit.exe file.

One cause of the problem lies in the fact that third party software often replaces or corrupts the Gina.dll file - especially if you are using Windows NT. You could try replacing the Gina.dll file and seeing if this helps.

One solution a lot of people have found to be useful is the use Doug Knox's Fix Win XP which, when run, finds the cause of the vrlogon.dll error and then fixes it.

Unless you are confident of your abilities to tinker with the computer and the software in it, it is safer to use the services of a professional to sort out the problem and put a long term solution in place. It may cost a bit but at least you can be sure that your efforts to sort out the vrlogon.dll error yourself are not doing more harm than good.