Upon booting from my a: drive with a Win2k floppy and getting about 5-7% of the way through the startup procedure progress meter, I now get a blue screen with the following messg: "STOP:c000021 Unknown Hard Error \SystemRoot\System 32\ntdll.dll" It says to uninstall any recent hardware or software additions, but there have been none...so any ideas? It does the same thing in safe mode, s.m. w/ command prompt and all other startup options given at the boot startup menu. I was gonna do a repair if I could get to the desktop somehow, but if I can't get any startup......??????

Does this machine only have Windows 2000 on it. It doesnt really matter I have gotten to the repair console by starting a install....selecting fresh install. Pointing the winnt directory as the one your using now. When Windows 2000 get to a point in the installation it will ask if you want to repair an existing installation. You need to have a emergency repair floppy to make it work. If you dont have one.........when you get Windows 2000 running again make sure you create one. There is only a couple of files on it....but Windows 2000 keeps some critical files available on your hard disk to repair a problem. It can save your bacon if something happens. As far as whats happening when you boot up. Something is corrupted, probably an entry in your registry which is a very complex set of commands. You could have developed a hardware conflict due to a problem in your registry. Which could be due to something another program did. Quite often problems develop that are software related. And have nothing to do with the OS. I have learned it is best to test software on a machine that is least important to you. Keeping only software you want to keep and is known to not cause problems on your main computer. Nothing messes up a OS faster than installing and uninstalling lots of different software and games.

ok.....the thing is .... i changed the boot sequence in cmos to boot the cd rom first... same thing happened ... the system posts until 5-7% of the way through and then freezes... this happens when booting off the 2000 setup disks also.... so i can't even get to the desktop or a comand prompt in any mode.... i have been testing software so thats probably the prob.... so if i cant do this then what would you think I could try next?

Yes, I am running Win2K Enterprise...

Have the same problem. Installing Win2K on a blank HD. After the files were copied to the HD, it rebooted and this is as far as it went. I'm using a 300 MHZ Gateway. Still troubleshooting.

do this........ get a fresh copy of ntdll.dll and copy it into the 'installation directory' - this is a directory which the instalation program makes. It should fix the problem; if not write to me, i'll explain in details.