STOP: c0000221

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quiet_one

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Oct 16, 2002
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with a new system i'm putting together i keep encountering the following error when trying to install W2K:

STOP: c0000221 Unknown Hard Error
\SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll

i've checked the microsoft website, and whilst a little helpful does not really help track down the error. has anyone encountered this or similar errors? can anyone make suggestions for what might be causing it?

any help greatly appreciated.

- qo.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by quiet_one on 02/06/03 08:04 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Also, how are you booting to do the install? Off diskettes or the CD? If diskettes definitely try to boot from the CD.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>
 
one last thing. Believe it nor not this could be caused by flaky RAM. Check your RAM, if you have 2 sticks try just one at a time, or try swapping in a different stick (if you have one available)

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>
 
cheers for that.

1) the install is from a backup of my Win2K. (like an idiot i lost the original when i moved house) booting from CD. so, it ~could~ be a corrupt file on the CD, however i think not. i'm actually putting two systems together at the moment, and i've tried the same disk in both systems. in one its worked fine (several times) and in the other it doesn't. i've installed it onto different hard disks with the same effect: in one machine its fine, in the other its not. so, looks like the install itself is fine, which brings me onto point number 2 ...

2) the MS website suggested that it could be a hardware error/conflict. what is interesting is that one of the few differences between the two machines is that the one that works uses a single 512MB DDR333 stick, the one that doesn't uses two 256MB DDR333 sticks. could be that one of those sticks is 'flaky'. a very nice term by the way. i'll try that out tonight.

cheers once again, and keep the suggestions coming.

- qo.
 
hmmm .. swapping the ram doesn't appear to solve the problem. nor the keyboard, mouse, or CD ROM. its looking more and more hard-disk related. i've got 2 drives to work fine in the machine (an old 2gig maxtor and an even older 1gig quantum fireball) but anything over 2gig gives this error. that could be a coincidence of course. any new suggestions?

- qo.
 
Looked up your error message on MS Knowledge base...

<b>CAUSE
If you receive this error message, the file listed in the error message is corrupted.
RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, you need to either obtain a new copy of the file or reinstall Windows. If reinstallation fails to solve the problem, a hardware or network problem may exist.</b>

Wipe the drive and re-install. I've seen problems like this before when installing. Watch the install very carefully before first reboot. Does it error while copying any files, saying stuff like "can't find... blah blah" Any error messages like that?
 
i've reinstalled twice, and the same problem occurs. there doesn't seem to be any problem with the install itself, no files missing or anything, but when it comes round to booting on the system, it fails with blue-screen-o-death and that error.

furthermore, i've tried putting that self-same disk and install into another machine, and it works fine. sounds like a hardware problem but i have no idea what.

- qo.
 
can you try booting with underclocked RAM? i.e. change it to 100Mhz instead of 133 and CAS3 instead of CAS2 or 2.5? Just as a test...

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>
 
If I remember from your IBM Deathstar post, they're both the same machines you're building right? It could be mobo if it installs perfectly but fails on first boot. I've seen that before, turned out the secondaty IDE channel was fubar and kept corrupting one file (weird).
 
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