What is this "Security Templates" error message ?

When getting into Local Security Policy in Administrative Tools to check if
"Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile" is enabled we were met with a
message box thus:
-----------------------------------------------------------
(Box heading)
"Security Templates"

(Box text)
"The Group Policy security settings that apply to this machine could not be
determined.
The error returned when trying to retrieve these settings from the local
security database
(%windir%\security\database\secedit.sdb) was: The parameter is incorrect.
All local security settings will be displayed, but no indication will be
given as to whether or not a given security setting is defined by Group
Policy.
Any local security setting modified through this User Interface may
subsequently be overwritten by domain-level policies."
----------------------------------------------------------

This is a little too daunting to understand or speculate on any remedial
action that might be necessary.
This particular notebook is not connected to the home network and uses
public wi-fi to connect to the Internet occasionally.

No network or domain settings or policies have been set up apart from the
defaults when Windows XP Pro SP2 was first installed.

Any insights would be gratefully appreciated.
Regards and TIA.

JP
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