Unknown hard error ntdll.dll when trying to install XP

[sCream]

Im trying to format my parents HP laptop and i cant seem to install XP (the laptop currently runs vista).

So i put in the XP cd and i reboot and boot from the cd, everything seems to be going good in the XP install until the blue screen pops up and says "unknown hard error ntdll.dll".

Now, i cant format or install XP because of this stupid problem, any idea how to fix this??

[Mibz]

Most HPs have a sort of "You can only recover using our discs, it'll take more effort than it's usually worth to do a clean format on this machine" protection on them. What's the model of the laptop?

[sCream]

Originally posted by Mibz
Most HPs have a sort of "You can only recover using our discs, it'll take more effort than it's usually worth to do a clean format on this machine" protection on them. What's the model of the laptop?

ah damnit, dv2317ca

[GQBalla]

boot from cd and perform a complete wipe -

dban is a nice nuke, and than try to reinstall xp

[ricosuave]

make sure the memory chips are seated tightly

[Grogador]

If you can't find the recovery disks/partition, try using a WinXP disk with SP3 streamlined. Some devices I've tried simply won't install with an SP2 or lower disk...

[sCream]

ah im gonna have to revisit this problem next week, ran out of time that day and now im out of town

[SpireTECH]

The CD/DVD-ROM may be the culprit. Try disabling UltraDMA for the CD-ROM in the BIOS.

A bad or damaged Windows XP CD could also cause this problem. I would try a second CD if you have one, just to rule this out.

I also found this, just doing a quick search:

Think I figured out the root cause (or at least one of them to this issue). Brief background: we have about 150 older HP d220 systems that are pushing 4 years old now. As hard drives started dying we had sporadic issues with a reload of the machine throwing this bluescreen on boot immediately after applying sp2 for WinXP. After narrowing it down to specific to certain hard disk drives that were causing this issue I dug a little deeper and it seems that if you purchase a newer ide disk drive some older ide controllers have issues after sp2 with drives set to UDMA6. So far 3/3 replacements have gone smooth after downloading the appropriate manufacturer's drive utility ( a bootable cd image from hitachi in my case) and manually setting the drive back to UDMA 5 mode.