Category: From the Help Desk

Today is a Tech Tip Two-for-one. 0xc0000218, or a missing Boot.ini file. If 0xc0000218 doesn’t apply to you, scroll past it to see how to fix a missing boot.ini or HAL.dll file. This advice from Help Desk is a little more on the advanced side, it’s not the kind of problem you’ll see every day. However, the errors you’ll see here are errors anybody can recover from. You know you’re in for a bad day when your computer won’t boot, but these tips out, they may get you back up and running. Since this article is for slightly more advanced users, I’m going to leave out some of the basics – when I say “Boot to the Recovery Console” I’m going to assume you know what that means. While these are errors that are easy to overcome, one misstep in this part of the computer can cause a world of trouble, so you still may want to rely on an experienced friend for assistance.

0xc0000218

I had a user who was getting a Blue Screen error on their Windows XP machine, right after or during bootup. It read:

Stop: 0xc0000218 {Registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SYSTEM or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

To resolve this wasn’t too painful. If you perform a true Repair from a Windows XP disc, a lot of customization can be wiped out. Here’s what I did to just get back up and running, and not worry about my user profiles and everything else:

NOTE: In the case of my example, the corrupted file was SYSTEM, but yours may indicate a problem with the SOFTWARE hive. If that’s the case, replace SYSTEM at the end of any line below with SOFTWARE. If you can do it from the Windows Advanced Startup Options even better, but you may have to boot from a Windows XP CD – but either way you want to get to the Recovery Console.

I always type the following just to make sure I get back to the root of the C: drive, then in to the Windows directory. If you’ve installed Windows elsewhere, of course navigate to the proper directory, like WINNT.

1. cd
2. cd windows
3. cd system32
4. cd config
5. rename system system.bak
6. copy C:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system
7. exit

Let the computer reboot and see if your problem is resolved!

If your computer reports that the Boot.ini file is missing or corrupt:

1. Boot an XP CD
2. select the recovery console
3. Attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini
4. del C:\boot.ini
5. bootcfg /rebuild
6. fixboot
7. exit
8. After the reboot, you should be able to get back in to Windows!

I’ve been told that this works for the HAL.dll boot error as well, but I’m not certain, I’ve only ever used it for a boot.ini problem. It’s important to note that whether your have a problem with your registry hive or your boot.ini or whatever – you shouldn’t rely on these as “Fixes” to your problem. You certainly have a corrupt Windows installation and could even have a failing hard drive – you should back your data up immediately if either of these presented solutions lets you back in to your system.

This isn’t quite my normal “From the Help Desk” kind of tip for a tech-tip-Tuesday, but I ran in to it last week and thought you might want to know about it.

I recently received an error from my Android, after a reboot, that it was unable to mount my SD Card, and suggested that it may need formatting. Bad sign. I wasn’t about to Format my SD Card and lose everything to “fix” the issue. I would have to reinstall a ton of apps, I would lose photos, music, and other documents on the card… no, I wasn’t going to have any part of this.

I removed and reinserted the card several times, rebooted the phone multiple times: nothing worked. Finally I inserted the card in to my laptop’s SD Card reader, and even then I was greeted with the same error message, that I would need to format the disk. Again, no thanks. So here’s all I had to do:

Before continuing: it is possible that this process will not fix your card, it may be beyond normal repair, but this is just a suggestion that was able to get me back in business. Something is corrupt that is causing this issue, and there may be some applications or data on the card that is corrupted during the “repair” process, you may lose some data in thies proess. Again, although typically minimal if at all, this “fix” can result in data loss. Also, this is likely not a PERMANENT solution for you – the card is probably beginning to go bad and should be replaced as soon as possible.

With the card inserted in to the computer, it should be assigned a drive letter (for example, “E:“). If you’re in the “Computer” (Windows 7) or “My Computer” (Windows XP) screen, you’ll see the drive listed, with a letter, but if you double click on it, it will prompt you to format the sd card. DO NOT format the card.

1) Open a command prompt:
Windows 7: Start > search for CMD > click the program listed as CMD with the little black icon
or
Windows XP: Start > Run > cmd > OK (or enter)

2) In the command prompt that appears type the following (note, in my example, my SD Card was given the drive letter of E: – but replace the E: with whatever letter your card has been assigned in My Computer):
chkdsk E: /f /r
Then press ENTER.

You will see the computer run a checkdisk process on the sd card. It will repair whatever is wrong with the filesystem and you’ll most likely be able to use the card in your phone again. But do not ignore this warning – the card is clearly beginning to fail and you should move important data off of it and REPLACE the card entirely as soon as possible, copying all of your data to a new card!

If you don’t have an SD Card Adapter like the one pictured above, or any other way to connect your SD Card to your computer, I do not know of any way to perform this process while the card is still inside your phone, sorry.

Whether I try to use Bing.com, Xbox.com, or several other legitimate websites, I keep having problems with Internet Explorer crashing out. I’m sure I have my Windows Updates, so what is going on?

I had this problem on my work computer just a few months ago. And even though I was certain I had my updates, and had even went from IE8 to IE9 trying to resolve the issue, I still had problems with my browser crashing on many of Microsoft’s own websites. Why? Simple.

I was missing Silverlight. Trust me, I genuinely thought I already had it installed, but until I went to the Silverlight website and installed it, my problems continued. Silverlight was and is Microsoft’s tool to compete with Flash. HTML5 really seems to be taking over, and will continue to grow as the HTML standard improves. Upgrading to Internet Explorer 9 seemed to resolve my issues with Bing, but I still couldn’t use Xbox.com to save my life. I realized that despite my having been through the Windows Update process about a million times, I had missed something and simply needed to install Silverlight. A few short seconds later and all of my brower crashing problems were solved!

Why didn’t you have the problem all the time? Also an easy answer: Silverlight isn’t as ubiquitous as flash – so I only really noticed a problem on sites that used it the most. Where would you find those? Microsoft’s own sites, of course! Installing the Silverlight plugin resolved my issues, and I hope it fixes yours!

I deal with this one, time and time again, within the Help Desk. What causes it to trigger, I’m not certain. But one day, when trying to open Excel 2007 XLS documents, I come to the error message that says “There was a problem sending the command to the program.” If this happens to you, the solution is typically quick and easy. I have yet to see it in Excel 2010, but the solution is most likely the same. When greeted with “There was a problem sending the command to the program here’s what you do:

• Click on the Office Button (in the upper left, where the File Menu was in Office XP and is in Office 2010).
• Click Excel Options at the bottom.
• Click Advanced on the left.
• Scroll all the way down and look for the longest option, named “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).”
• UNCHECK that box.

That’s it! Exit Excel 2007 and test it! This should be the solution to your error “problem sending the command” error.