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April 17th, 2008 23:00
c2000018 error message on startup
I have read some of the solutions to the above error message in past posts. My problem is that I can't get even access the Recovery Console to begin with. After XP attempts start up it goes directly to the blue screen with the STOP: c200018 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive(file)....
What to do to stay off the blue screen and get to the Recovery Console? I even tried booting up with the Dell disc in the CD bay.
Thanks in advance,
blueskreen
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Ryanh6178
670 Posts
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April 18th, 2008 03:00
Hi Blueskreen,
You may have to take your drive out and connect it to another system as a secondary device.
Did you happen to notice what Registry file was damaged? SOFTWARE, SYSTEM, SAM, SECURITY, DEFAULT, etc.....?
blueskreen
5 Posts
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April 18th, 2008 03:00
the full message is:
Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its alternate
ejn63
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April 18th, 2008 10:00
Buy a notebook to desktop drive cable or an external USB 2.0 or firewire drive enclosure, attach the drive to a working desktop or notebook and copy your data for backup.
DO NOT PROCEED WITHOUT A BACKUP - DOING SO COULD BE FATAL TO YOUR DATA.
Return the drive to the system. Boot, press F12 and run the extended diagnostics on the drive. If the drive passes, skip the next step.
If the drive fails and you're under warranty, call Dell, report the error and they'll ship you a new drive.
If the drive fails and you're out of warranty, bin it and replace it.
If the drive passes, you can continue to try a repair (which fails more often than it succeeds) or bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.
Recovery usually fails to restore the registry; in about 70-80% of all cases, it's a hardware fault that causes the problem.
blueskreen
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April 18th, 2008 19:00
I spoke with Dell support for 2 hours and he finally got my computer to boot up after much trial. The Recovery Console could not revert to an earlier date after repeated attempts, only yesterday's date was in bold and nothing previous. All the files are still there so I will back up(mostly Word docs) to a flash drive. Dell told me that Windows will need to be reinstalled nevertheless so I'll call them, as they suggested, when I've completed backing up files/programs to have them walk me through properly.
Dell support was very helpful and patient, and free too.
Ryanh6178
670 Posts
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April 18th, 2008 19:00
Hi Blueskreen,
It appears that the Software piece of your registry is damaged. Now, taking Ejn63's advice is good for double checking the hardware is ok.
If your registry was corrupted by some other means then you're still ok so far. The SOFTWARE registry file has to do with all the applications that you've installed. All the pointers in the registry are now chunked so you'll probably have to forget about recovery. Your created data, however, should still be ok providing no hardware failure.
After you double-check the hard drive with diagnostics, then I would still connect the drive as a secondary to get your data off.
After you get your data secured, you might just want to reinstall fresh.
blueskreen
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April 18th, 2008 21:00
It seems that I have lost my Outlook Express email client containing all contacts along with both Internet Explorer and Mozilla bookmarks. When opened all those programs are starting as if never before used even from the user profiles that were saved in full, at least document wise. Any suggestions?
Ryanh6178
670 Posts
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April 21st, 2008 14:00
blueskreen,
When you reinstalled did you format and resinstall or just delete the c:\Windows directory to do it?
If you just deleted the Windows directory then your data is still under your old profile name in the Documents and Settings folder.
blueskreen
5 Posts
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April 21st, 2008 15:00
Ryan,
I contacted Dell customer support by phone and over several sessions with them all problems were resolved. Everything that need to be backed up was including Word docs, Outlook Express address book and its folders(Inbox, etc). Windows XP as reinstalled with no problems. I'm not too good a computer tech so I don't remember what was done previous to the reinstall but I was satisfied that what stuff I needed was gotten off the hard drive before that action.
The only thing hanging now is a few of the OE folders that were saved can't seem to be transferred to the new ones such as for example, Sent Items. The folders get saved with a .dbx extension. Some of those did transfer to the new ones but not all and in doing so the tech was trying to figure out why so in the Contol Panel...Folder Options...File Types...Opens With: option he tried to change it opening with Word Pad and its extension but that failed. Now those can't seem to revert back to the .dbx's opens with, whatever that might be, it isn't listed in the drop down menu of file type options.
Do you have a solution for that problem?
Ryanh6178
670 Posts
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April 21st, 2008 19:00
Did you try to overwrite the new "sent items.dbx" with the old one?
Otherwise, you should still be able to import I would assume.