Tm.sys - 0xc0000221 Error

boweasel · 21 Jun 2017

This tower was upgraded to 10 (from 7) about 18 months ago and has performed admirably, but a few days ago I started getting a load failure message when I booted. It took me to the Troubleshoot screens where I found that Startup Repair could not identify or correct the problem.

I then went to the command prompt and ran a chkdsk which found no errors. I then ran sfc scannow which found no integrity violations. I then ran both fixboot and fixmbr commands which completed successfully. Rebooting showed that nothing had changed. I then went to the system Reset which retains your personal files but resets Windows. That eventually gave me the following 'The operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors'. Underneath that it gave me the file name of tm.sys and the error code of 0xc0000221.

A forum search on tm.sys returned nothing. That seems weird - nobody else has ever had this error or had a problem with that file?

bro67 · 21 Jun 2017

It is a Transaction Manager Driver. Because you upgraded from 7 to 10, you will have to do a repair install. It is suggested to do a clean install for Windows 10 not a upgrade, since any problems carried over from a previous install can cause the new version of Windows to start puking errors.

boweasel · 27 Jun 2017

(For some reason I do not seem to be able to 'Reply with quote' - when I hit the quote button I just get the never-ending circle. It happens on 2 different computers with 2 different browsers and on both Windows 7 and 10)

Repair install, you say? How does one accomplish that on a W10 computer that won't start?

Anyhow, I used the 10 DVD and the command prompt to save multiple folders and then reinstalled. The problems created from that will be posted to the Installation and Upgrade subforum(264 Viewing)