Stop Error c0000218

[kawika007]

I have an IBM 220 Server with Raid 5 & 3X40 gig drives. All was just peachy untill I defraged the Registry with Diskeeper or something. Not sure now after bummer reality that this rig took over 100 hrs of time to load up & now it won't boot due to a registry error. I did NOT make a back-up before this defrag. After the first boot I got this error. Do I have to reinstall win 2000 over the current one ? Will ?I looseall data ? Any way to recover data ?

Thanks,
David.

 

[craigey]

I got this from a simialr post to yours. see if it helps.

To fix either a corrupt SYSTEM or SOFTWARE file problem:
(assumption: you have recently run the W2K Backup Program->Create Emergency Disk and checked the Save Registry option)

1) Boot from CD

2) If your hard disk is connected to the Promise IDE connector, you will have to press F6 and have a floppy ready to load the Promise IDE drivers (see Asus app note:

http://www.asus.com/products/techref/Tech-report/qa-mb0121.html

3) Select R option to Repair

4) Now select the option that allows you to go to console command prompt mode.

5) At the prompt, type cd \winnt\system32\config
This command will change the working directory to
\winnt\system32\config


6) Save the offending file by doing a rename. Example .. If the file called SYSTEM is the offending file, type the following command

rename system system.bad

7) Now copy the last good occurrence of the file by typing the following (assumming once again that the offending file was called SYSTEM):

copy \winnt\repair\RegBack\System
\winnt\system32\configSYSTEM

8) To leave console mode, type EXIT at the prompt


There are aslo suggestions for flashing the bios with the latest version etc. But there is a huge list of replies and people experiencing the same problem. The link is:

thread616-86626
good luck .. hope this helps.

 

[kawika007]

I'm getting an "invalid Command" at the recovery console when trying to repair the corrupted (or perhaps missing) file to be changed directory (cd:....)Now what. RememberI did Not make a copy of the reg. Asa repeat of my offense, I ran diskeeper reg drfrag prog with all the boxes checked for options on the menu. This resulted in my stop error on next boot "c0000218" I've read all the posts, & it appears this code is for a whole family of similar, but different problems. I realize I may have to reinstall win 2000 Pro, If I do a overlay I recieved a message about loosing all files & folders. Now I understand in win 98 the programs were not always functional, but loose stuff in Win 2000 ? Anyone help ? kawika007@msn.com cel 832-754-6692

 

[johnb420]

Kawika007... I had/have the exact same problem. After much research it appears that my registry became corrupt by an incorrect power down. All of the wall outlets in my home office were on a wall switch and one of my friends accidentally turned the switch off, killing the PC without first shutting it down properly. Hind site shows me that I should have had a UPS on my system but I didn't because this is my first experience with a crash that I couldn't recover from.

That said, here is the progress I have made so far. I exhausted all options for recovery using emergency disks and booting directly from WIN2Kpro disk. After performing a repair, which WIN indicated completed successfully, I still had the exact same c0000218 error (mine is indicating the \software file is the corrupt file that cannot load).

I reloaded WIN2KPro and when ask if I wanted to replace the current operating system and lose all files I said "no". This caused my system to set up a "dual boot mode" with 2 versions of WIN2KPro. The original faulty version of windows still causes the exact same error but the newly installed version will boot successfully and allow me to access all files on the C drive (I have a C and a D drive and the operating systems are on C). This is a good thing for me because, worst case, I can now move all files to the D drive, reformat drive C and perform a clean install. I don't want to do a clean install if I can keep from it because that will leave me to reconfigure the whole system all over again, which would take countless hours.

Here is what I intend to try next and I would like some advice from anyone who can enlighten me as to whether this will work or if I will be screwing myself further.

I have a backup file that I made around Oct. of last year and I am fairly certain that I made a backup of the registry as well. I intend to use the "Restore" function in Windows to restore the Oct reg to the newly installed operating system.

Does anyone know if this will work correctly? If it will work and I am able to get the system restored to the state it was in in Oct (which would leave me only slightly screwed) then how do I go about removing the old version of Win2K that will presently not boot?

I hope this post helps someone as I have been working on this for over a month now. Thread 616-86626 does have extremely valuable info and that is where I found most of my answers... Unfortunately, I can't access that thread anymore. Does anyone know why? It has been open since 2001 so is it possible that it expired and was removed from this site?

Thanks in advance for any assistance,
John Bowers
Field Engineer

 

[johnb420]

Sorry, I forgot to include my system configuration:

Mother Board: Jetway (Model unknown right now)
Processor: AMD Athalon 1800
Hard drives: 2- C is Maxtor 20Gig and D is Seagate 60 gig (both drives have only 1 partition each,NTFS)
Memory: 2 x 256DDR total 512m
Video card: NVidia Geforce 4MX w/64mDDR onboard.
Sound card: SoundBlaster
OS': 2 operating systems(Dual Boot) - Faulty system is WIN2Kpro that was an upgrade from WIN98... The working OS is a full version of WIN2Kpro that was not upgraded from 98.

The fact that one of the operating systems will work indicates to me that I don't have a hardware problem...i.e faulty memory or power supply as many people speculate in these forums.

Also, what programs are available to edit a registry from the command prompt? Is that even possible? I read in thread 616-86626 that the problem in the registy is due to instances of C: being changed/truncated to a $. If I could access the faulty registry and repair it than I think it would cure all of my woes...

Thanks/Regards,
John Bowers
Field Engineer

 

[bcastner]

Try using the Win2k registry repair tool first:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...01-2c68-4de8-9229-ca494362419c&displaylang=en

 

[johnb420]

Thank you, bcastner. I looked at the instructions on the linked site but I'm slightly confused by them. I already have a set(4) of bootable disks for Win2K but the instructions say to first download the 6 bootables for WinXP and then download and run the Win2K reg repair utility with disk 6 inserted so that additional files can be written to the disk. Do you know if I actually need the 6 floppies for XP or if I can accomplish the same thing using my Win2K floppies in conjunction with the Win2K reg repair utility and just use disk 4 of my current set instead of disk 6 of the XP set?

Thanks,
John Bowers
Field Engineer