Vista error C0000221

Hi guys, my cousin brought me his pc to try and sort out for him. He had posted on some vista site hoping for help but no one replied him so i've just copied over his message here:

hey all , i hope i can get some help with this problem that has just started. Pc was working perfectly when i left it and then came home and my sis said she just tried to use the pc and it came up with this blue screen and error message. The message was Stop: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error \systemrrot\system32\ntdll.dll

I googled the error and there are no definitive answers to the problem. I have checked all the cables in the pc and even changed them. There has been no new devices added to the pc nor any new drivers/updates or any new software. I can safteley say the pc is virus free adware free.

I did try the vista repair from the disc and it says repairing and then it does its thing and then when i click finish it tries to boot up and brings me to a screen where i have the option of repairing again and boot normally. If i try any of them then i just land up again at the blue screen! I have tried to boot into safe mode but it fails to boot into safe mode.

Oh yes while the repair was going on i looked at the diagnostics report and it said that the root cause was System Volume on disk is Corrupt Repair action= file system repair (chkdsk). So even though the repair failed i tried the repair menu again and this time i tried using the CMD to see if i could do a chkdsk. The chkdsk says i have to unmount first so i click yes and then it continues doing something and i say something about orphaned files and then it says that chkdsk CANNOT CONTINUE and then ends there. I tried doing it with chkdsk /r /f /b but they all fail!

Any ideas how i fix this WITHOUT having to do a reinstall? Is it just a matter of replacing that 1 corrupt file or is it something else?

Thanks

PS the OS is vista 32 and i think its svc pack 1.

 

It looks like he'll be looking at a reinstall of vista.:cry

 

is it just not a matter of replacing the ntdll.dll file? If it is and i hope it is how would i do it from the vista disc? Really got no clue about the functions of vista!

 

Is the vista disk just an upgrade disk or a full install disk?
But it does look like you'll have to format the hard drive and reinstall vista.:cry

 

ok after pulling my hair out trying to fix this pc i just took out the hdd and stuck it into my xp machine to copy the files that i could rescue. I then put back the hdd in its orignal pc and started vista dvd to reinstall. When reinstalling it shows the hdd and all partitions, i selected the partitions and choose to delete them and then i choose format and then choose to install on a new created partition. So off we go then, 15min and it says its finsihed and rebooting, now when it reeboots i get an error from win boot manager saying that file \boot\bcd status 0xc0000034 windows boot configuration data is missing required info!!

So i tried reinstalling again only this time to be told that winloader was missing!

Ok so i got fed up and opted to repair installation and then choose the cmd window. Here i did a chkdsk on the drive and agin it failed. I did a dir/w on the hdd and it still seemed to show the old files there. So i assume that when installing vista again that the option to format the drive never worked! So in CMD i decided to format the hdd so i went format c: /fs:ntfs it went about doing its thing got to 100% and then asked me for a volume label i entered NONE by pressing enter and then it tells me that formaat failed!! I then tried it again this time at volume lable i wrote samsung and pressed enter and again it said format failed!!!

So right now i've pulled out the drive and stuck it into my xp machine and and the drive was recognised as a raw drive, i then told xp to format it ntfs. As i right this its still formatting the drive so i really have no idea what the outcome will be.

Any ideas why in dos the formatting kept failing?

Also the vista version i have is an OEM disc for this pc so i really don't know if its the full vista or not but when checking the size of the disc its around 2.6gb if i'm not mistaken.

 

oh man this hdd is driving me nuts!! Ok managed to finish formatting the hdd in XP and now just ran a chkdsk on it and this is what i get :


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\suli>chkdsk f:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.


This is on a newly formatted hdd!! What the hell? Then i try chkdsk /f and get this:

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Insufficient disk space to fix volume bitmap. CHKDSK aborted.

Someone pliz put me out my misery!!

 

Did you try to do a low level format (erase everything on hdd including master boot record)?
Plus what make and model is your hdd?

 

yes i did try a low level format using the tools provided by samsung. Hdd is a samsung 500gb. When i finished the format i tried to install vista again and now it tells me windows setup could not reinitialize the deployment engine!!! Man alive! So i really don't know whats going on here!! When installing vista does the disc need to be in ntfs already or can a newly formatted hdd do the job? i did try the format option when booting from the vista disc but it doesn't seem to work at all, just no response from it!!

 

Did you try another cable just in case the one your using is bad?
And to answer you other question: no not that i know of if your using an upgrade disk it won't give you any optoins to format, but if you have a full version of vista it should have an option tell let you format your hdd.
Since you said the hdd is a samsung is it a sata hdd (two small cables plugging into the back of the hdd (one data cable and one power connector))?

 

hi yes its the sata hdd and i have tried changing the cables. I've also done a memtest and thats clear....

 

ok so i finally gave up on trying to sove this issue due to the lack of advice i was getting from various sources. Thanks to all those that tried to help. In the end i just bought a new drive stuck it in and hey presto!!

So now i will leave this thread and start a new as now the problem is no longer about the vista error its about the hard drive and me not being able to format it. Just not sure where to post either in software or hadware! Guess i'll try it out in hardware!