Was wondering if anyone could help me.

I'm running a Rock Xtreme Laptop, 3.4GHz P4, 1024MB RAM, 80GB HDD.

Was running Windows XP Pro, however without reason on one boot It began to load XP, showed the Windows XP boot screen, however once that was finished, instead of displaying the welcome screen as usual, it showed a blank screen (no cursor).

I thought it to be a good idea to re-instal windows, I wasn't bothered about loosing files and folders (I have it all backed up). I tried installing XP Pro, It copied files successfuly after a quick NTFS format, however when it came to installation, I recieved a blue screen with the fatal system error C000021a. Apparently a KnownDLL file failed verification or something.

So I tried reformatting and installing Server 2003 Standard. Again same problem after files were successfully copied.

So... I tried Vista Ultimate, again to no avail. Setup copied files but failed to expand them (install).

Tried each Windows Installation also with full format (not quick), however they hung at 0%!

I presume it's a hard drive error, however need to fix it. Waranty expired Jan 07! !

If ANYONE has ANY IDEAS, please let me know asap. For ease could you please email them straight to deankellham@gmail.com.

Would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you in advance for any help.

Dean Kellham

did they hang while formatting or after?

Got fatal system error and blue screen, before any formatting on previous XP installation. Hung during full format (not quick) at 0%

During format (0%)

Quick Format succesful. However blue screen n fatal error when trying to install windows on quickly formatted drive.


Dean Kellham

Looks like you could be out of luck Check the bios settings and make sure the settings for your hard drive and CD drive are correct and the cables are connected properly. Since it only breaks when disk access actually begins, I think you can rule out IDE controller problems other than the above. If these don't help, I am out of ideas

By the way, I did some hunting, C000021a is a kernel panic generated when when Winlogon or Csrss fails. Normally this is fixable, but since you hard drive has died too, that might have been the cause [ie, the drive won't read where Winlogon or Csrss is].

I'm yet to try it but i was thinking: might it help to boot from a 98 startup disk, run fdisk, delete the partition, and create a new one. Could that remove any faults on the C: partition, or do you think it's a physical hard disk problem.

Nothing has happened to the PC out of the ordinary, therefore I don't see how physical damage could have occured.

All the IDE's are in place and properly attached. It's a Rock Xtreme 9700.

Rock Xtreme 9700

Shouldn't that be the same as the full format? I guess it's worth a try.

I really think it's a physical problem, but I guess you should try everything. If you've got any Linux LiveCDs, see if they can format your drive, to make sure it's not just fdisk choking.

Random hardware failures are pretty rare these days, but that's not to say they don't happen.