I'd guess possible hard drive failure. HD or SSD drive? You could try to reinstall windows or possibly try to repair it from it's installation dvd.
Laptops may also have recovery partition, don't know what system Dell uses. Consulting its manual should tell.
Does it boot from the DVD and start windows install like it should?
Toss ubuntu on a flash drive and go from there.
Wow guys.. The error code is right there.. STOP ERROR 218
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156640
Your system registry is hosed. You HAVE to reload the OS which means wiping the disk out. The only way to save your data is to pull the drive out, buy a new one, and use the old one as an external.A Stop 0xc0000218 error message means that a necessary registry hive file could not be loaded. This error message can occur if the file is corrupt or missing. To resolve this issue, you can reinstall the operating system and restore the registry files from a backup. The registry files may have been corrupted because of hard disk corruption or some other hardware problem.
There IS HOPE though. If you can select LAST KNOWN GOOD it might disable the driver that shat all over the hive and allow you to boot.
What was the last thing that you did before this stop error occurred? Did you install something?
To boot to DVD:
When the BIOS flash screen (where the DELL logo appears before Windows starts to load)
HIT F12 for ONE TIME BOOT, then select Boot from DVD
OR
Hit F8 and select Boot from DVD
-This post was written on a MacBook. LONG LIVE THE UNIX KERNEL!!-
Last edited by DarkApollo; 03-21-2014 at 06:09 PM.
I should clarify my suggestion - if he doesn't have a backup or can't ID and needs to start from scratch, he can boot to linux and grab all of the data AND settings, toss them to an external drive, reinstall Windows, hit the drivers one by one, and Bobs your uncle. I've had to do this a surprising number of times.
That said I typed one sentence with my thumbs and did not elaborate; I am guilty
Last edited by Frizzle Fry; 03-21-2014 at 06:32 PM.
Ya I googled the stop code and was reading up on it but I much rather have somebody hold my hand and tell me how to do it. Ill do this when I get back off to baseball and soccer with the kids on two seperate parts of the city SMH
This post is from my iPhone cuz my wife won't let me or the kids use her MacBook
I work Tier II desktop support, basically when the help desk f's up, it comes to us.
I can help you walk through this if you want.