c0000221 errors and other XP install problems

[pcrobot]

OK, this is going to be a big post...

I was trying out the windows Vista Beta 2 x86 edition from the DVD kit I bought from Microsoft. It was ok, and I got to test it a little.

Then the problems began to happen... I put in my XP home Cd to try to go back to XP. it took a long time before Vista would let me open the CD folder and the setup and autorun wouldn't work. So, I rebooted, went into the BIOS and set it to boot from the CD drive. I started the setup when I got an error that said:

Stop: c0000221 Unknown Hard Error \systemroot\system 32\ntdll.dll

So I rebooted back to Vista to check out the error online, then went and tried rebooting to the XP disc again. It didn't work, and booted to Vista, I tried again and it happened again. (later I realized that I should've tried to disable booting from other device)

Then I installed Ubuntu linux from the install cd I had. After that was stable I tried booting from the XP cd and I got this error:

File \i386\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded The error Code is 4 Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

Next, (since Ubuntu doesn't recognize my PCI wireless adapter) I installed SimplyMEPIS 3.3 linux. Again, I tried booting to the XP disc. And I got this error (all the way after it copied the files and was seting up the rest off the stuff... where you first get a mouse cursor):

Fatal error Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)

I had to try again and I got this error next:

Stop: c0000221 {Bad Image CheckSum} The image wld32.dll is possibly corrupt. The header checksum doesn't match the computed checksum.

I tried installing XP again this afternoon and It got hung up on a file that it "couldn't read off the CD". I had that message come up lots of times during the other attempts, but it took less than 25 retries to ge it to work. This last time I retried over 100 times before I gave up.

This very annoying... Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

[Osiris]

sounds like a dirty cd drive, bad cd...possible memory issue???

 

[pcrobot]

sounds like a dirty cd drive, bad cd...possible memory issue???

I think it's my XP cd... it's pretty scratched up.

 

[Osiris]

well then thatll be the cause

 

[sPlAtOiD]

It dosnt sound like a read error. Use a win98 floppy boot disk and start without cd rom support. Then type fdisk at the A:. Then select the no4 option view all partitions.You should have a non dos partition.You need to delete that. When you try to delete it it will ask for the name of the partition if its blank just leave it blank. Just read the options to do this then when your done NO1 creat a active dos partition. Then reboot when all this is done. And take the floppy out and boot with your Windows XP disk in.