PMEM Service Failure

windows comments edit

It seems that every computer I work on has this issue, and I always forget how to fix it and have to go searching again… so as much for me as for you:

At boot time, I get an error in my System event log:

The PMEM service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

The answer I found over at Annoyances.org works:

  1. Run regedit
  2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PMEM\ and find the ImagePath key
  3. The value will be something like \??\\C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PMEMNT.SYS - change it to a valid version of that path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PMEMNT.SYS
  4. Do net start pmem at a command prompt to get the service running.

If you don’t have PMEMNT.SYS on your machine, you can just disable the service instead:

  1. Run regedit
  2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PMEM\ and find the Start key
  3. Change the value to 4 to disable the service.
  4. Next time you restart your computer, the service won’t start up so it won’t check for the PMEMNT.SYS file.

Comments