unplugged hard drives:still cannot boot from CD

[lyne]

I am having a ball here. A storm wiped out my hard drive. Dell sent a
new hard drive and I installed Windows XP on it. I connected my old
drive and was briefly able to see it. Now even the new drive seems
sick. I have tried booting from the CD and always get the error "STOP:
c0000221 Unknown Hard Error /SystemRoot/System32/ntdll.dll". The crazy
thing is this: I have now actually unplugged both hard drives and
still cannot boot from the CD!! How in the world am I to recover now?
I don't care about my data at this point - that ship has sailed. I
even tried booting from an old Win95 cd (surely the hw is incompatible)
and it does not work either.

Thanks for any help. I do not need another doorstop.

 

[Malke]

I am having a ball here. A storm wiped out my hard drive. Dell sent
a
new hard drive and I installed Windows XP on it. I connected my old
drive and was briefly able to see it. Now even the new drive seems
sick. I have tried booting from the CD and always get the error
"STOP:
c0000221 Unknown Hard Error /SystemRoot/System32/ntdll.dll". The
crazy
thing is this: I have now actually unplugged both hard drives and
still cannot boot from the CD!! How in the world am I to recover now?
I don't care about my data at this point - that ship has sailed. I
even tried booting from an old Win95 cd (surely the hw is
incompatible) and it does not work either.

Thanks for any help. I do not need another doorstop.

Apparently more than just the hard drive was damaged. It sounds like the
motherboard was fried. Contact Dell tech support for replacement.

Malke

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I am having a ball here. A storm wiped out my hard drive. Dell sent a
new hard drive and I installed Windows XP on it. I connected my old
drive and was briefly able to see it. Now even the new drive seems
sick. I have tried booting from the CD and always get the error "STOP:
c0000221 Unknown Hard Error /SystemRoot/System32/ntdll.dll". The crazy
thing is this: I have now actually unplugged both hard drives and
still cannot boot from the CD!! How in the world am I to recover now?
I don't care about my data at this point - that ship has sailed. I
even tried booting from an old Win95 cd (surely the hw is incompatible)
and it does not work either.

Thanks for any help. I do not need another doorstop.

That's a big clue that more electronics, located on the motherboard, were
fried. They generally aren't repairable; the most direct approach is to
simply replace the motherboard. You'll need to contact Dell for a
replacement.

HTH
-pk