Odd error that i cant seem to get around.. HELP!

[Vampirrella]

i have an older system, a AMD tbird @ 1.3ghz, KT7a-raid mobo with 768mb pc133 ram, a 20 gb WD hard drive and a gf3ti200. Always have ran win98SE on it but now id like to get away from that OS and go with XP Pro.

But when repartitioning, reformatting the drive and running the XP setup cd only results in the following error every time and stops the entire installation:


STOP: C0000221 UNKNOWN HARD ERROR

\SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\NTDLL.DLL


First i thought it was my cd so ive ran the setup and installed xp pro from this cd on 3 other systems, all perfectly working. So i knnow for a fact my cd is fine. Maybe its a piece of hard ware on the system it doesnt like? I have no clue.. how would i find this out?

The system will accept a full reinstall of win98se but im trying to get away from it cuz the M$ windows update page no longer will support win98 and so i can never d/l any updates for it.

Ive also tried installing Win2000 pro and i get the SAME error:

STOP: C0000221 UNKNOWN HARD ERROR

\SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\NTDLL.DLL

The same error happens prolly cuz both OS's are based on the same type of OS build? (i could be wrong, im not that os savvy)

Anyway.. does anyone know what to do about these errors and maybe how i can get around them? Anyone ever see such an odd thing?

Im stuck now cuz win98 is no longer supported and xp / win2k wont install.. i didnt like winME.. so now what? Is this system hosed? The hardware and everything worked flawless with win98se before it needed a reload after running 2 yrs fine prior.


HELP HELP HELP

 

[Somecallmetim]

Now when you did this, did you totally reformat the system, wiping 98 completely?
What this error is, the NTDLL.DLL, saying is that the primary boot partition is corrupt or something like that.
I've had problems with this before, but that involved a HAL problem. Your best bet is to repartition again, making sure win98 is totally gone.
If you still need to boot up 98, I'd suggest loading WinXP first, since it is very easy to do from there.

 

[Vampirrella]

yes ive totally wiped the C:\ partition clean, reformatted and everything... after the xp setup loads up and reboots to further install the OS, it comes up with a blue screen and says that error:

STOP: C0000221 UNKNOWN HARD ERROR

\SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\NTDLL.DLL

I have another 10GB IDE drive sitting here unused and completely empty reformatted... maybe i should take out that 20GB and just for kicks, try it again with the 10gb to try and reproduce the error.

I just cant put my finger on the issue here. Also, the partition im currently trying to install xp / win2k on, says it has nothing wrong with it. (it worked fine with win98se on it)

 

[bendixG15]

could this be a MBR problem ?????
Has the disk been formated in the past using third party software, like Maxtors EZ BIOS ???
Hey, I'm only thinking out loud for you...
Thats all I got..Good Luck .....

 

[Joemonkey]

well here is the KB article on that error, not much help

have you tried doing a low level format of the HDD? there could be a boot sector virus on there, or as bendixG15 suggested there could be something screwy with the MBR

i know Maxtor's Powermax software will do a low level format, and you can do it with the debug command too

 

[Nemmeh]

I'd try running a debug on the hard drive.

Debug Script from Dell Knowledge Base

I would also suggest unplugging any cards that are non-essential to the system loading XP.

I would unplug anything that is not essential, try installing with just MB/CPU/Mem/HDD/CDROM/VID.

Any other cards, pull em out and see if that works.

The debug script will completely remove all remenants of anything that was ever there. I'd suggest this route as others have already done.

Read the Dell Knowledge Base article, it will tell you exactly how to do Debug if you're unfamiliar with it.

 

[redbeard1]

The system will accept a full reinstall of win98se but im trying to get away from it cuz the M$windows update page no longer will support win98 and so i can never d/l any updates for it.

This is a separate issue. I just installed 98 today and ran all the updates normally.

Is the raid giving causing you grief when you are installing XP?