Blue Screen - Cannot access Safe mode or do anything

[Nathan8]

First of all i would like to say that i have found this site amazing and really helpful in all aspects of computing but this is my first post becuase i am lost

in simple terms.... i think my computer is a right off :-(

my bro has been on it downloading all sorts of rubbish and i have not got it to work.

So where do i begin... hmmm

well first of all the error mesages i am getting on my lovely blue screen is:

process1_initialization_failed

this occures when i try to boot normally.

when i try to boot in safe mode i get c0000218, and it is just that on a black screen.

i want to wipe my hard drive and install XP SP2.

so i manged to get the CD working (cos i ran into some problems) and in the windows xp setup, then i formatted (NTFS) and installed Windows, then re-booted and the computer said that it cannot find the Hard Drive?

Is my Hard Drive Dead?

on the Xp setup screen it states that the Hard drive is completely blank (i.e shows avaiable disk space), so i assume that my computer can locate the Hard drive but not on reboot!

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated cos im taking shots in the dark atm

 

[Route44]

Your error as per auhma.org:

0xC0000218: UNKNOWN_HARD_ERROR
A necessary Registry hive file couldn’t be loaded. The file may be corrupt or missing (requiring either an Emergency Repair Disk or a Windows reinstallation). The Registry files may have been corrupted because of hard disk corruption or some other hardware problem. A driver may have corrupted the Registry data while loading into memory, or the memory where the Registry is loading may have a parity error (turn off the external cache and check the physical RAM).


* Have you tried slaving it to another system and tried diagnosing it?

 

[raybay]

It would be helpful to know the computer or motherboard brand and model, and age of equipment.

Sometimes this happens simply when you have not properly shutdown the machine during the process.

Sometimes, if a SATA drive, it is merely a problem SATA cable. If you can, try trading cables with another. Same issue with an EIDE cable.
Suggest you take the time to try again if you can get it to boot... or boot to another machine, and reformat the drive there... if it canot be detected in a friend's system, then you can begin to wonder..

 

[Nathan8]

Cheers for all the help Lads...

I have managed to install XP on the Machine and everything is working... I took out the RAM and only used one of the 512 Sticks and that managed to resolve the Issue..

What i did find strange was that once the Installation was complete, i put back the RAM (Both 512 Sticks) just to see what happens And there was not Error message and everyhting worked fine (on the Surface anyway)!!!

Do you have any idea why this is the case? or shall i not keep the RAM in there becuase it might effect the PC later?

Plus i would like to ask if you guys know any good reading material cos im really intrested in furthering my knowledge. Any good material that you could suggest would be very much appreaciated. No matter what it is!

Thanks for the help with the BSOD

 

[Route44]

My suggestions are:

1. Run diagnostics on your harddrive A.S.A.P. with the free utility that your HD manufacturer should supply off their website.

2. Run Memtest on your RAM for a minimum of 7 Passes.

 

[raybay]

Do not count on that memory module to continue good performance. Bad memory should be considered as always bad... because the defect may be causing intermittent failures... and you do not get to pick which ones.