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Ntdll.dll error?!!!

M

MeathooK

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 11, 2004
Messages
87
I'm running a Via P4PB 400 motherboard with 2ghz p4 chip. 1 gig of ram, radeon 9700 pro, sb live value. Awhile ago a symantec update came up...the ones with the yellow shield that pop up in the system tray...so I download it. Once it's done downloading...the computer crashes. Then...whenever I logged into my computer, explorer.exe would crash every 2 seconds, only giving me enough time to get into cmd prompt before it would crash again. I try to format the drive in dos...wouldn't go, said invalid drive. Then tried to do it through the windows xp startup disks. After the 6th disk, the screen goes black, then comes back on with a hard error: ntdll.dll. So...I get a new hard drive for christmas, brand new WD 160gb hard drive. Boot it up, after 6th disk to install windows, black screen, then hard error: ntdll.dll blue screen. I take out one of the sticks of memory, sound card and try again. Same outcome. I switch the two memories, same outcome. I'm thinking my motherboard has gone bad? Can anybody help me out?! MANY thanks in advance, my computer's been down for about 3 months...I've been workin on my dads computer...so thanks in advance.

-Jake
 
ntdll.dll is a specific driver for controlling system functions and is more specifically involved in mounting the NTFS formated drive

From what you've said I'm not convinced there are any hardware malfunctions, but rather a software corruption issue. My reasoning for this is NTDLL.dll is used for many system functions including loading the NTFS partition drivers for the computer to be able to mount (ie read from and write to) a NTFS formated drive. Your windows recovery disks may be trying to load the NTDll.dll from the hard drive directly when they boot your computer. If the file on your harddrive is corrupted, then that would lead to the error you mentioned. It could also easily explain why you can't get explorer to load without crashing.

I suggest that you do the following to correct your problem. You may be able to retrieve a working ntdll.dll file from here (but it may be an incorrect version for your operating system). Take your windows XP installation cd (I'm assuming you have WinXP and not win NT/2000), and boot from it. When the CD asks you if you want to run Automated System Recovery, do not press F2. But at the next point on the CD where it asks you if you want to run recovery, press R to run it (this is before the repair installation option which is offered around the time it starts talking about partitions). The CD should examine your operating system and ask you for the Adminstrator Account Password. Once you type this in, you will have a c> prompt which works in much the same way as C:\ does in DOS. Now that you've downloaded your NTdll.dll file, you should (using a burned CD or floppy --if its under 1.4mb's--) copy the file you downloaded to c:\windows\system32. I don't know which service pack you have if you are running no service pack, you might just try extracting the file from whatever *.CAB file that it is compressed in on your WinXP cd (this can be done from the same recovery c> prompt I mentioned above by using the extraction utility included on the CD itself). If you are using Service pack 1 or 1a or 2, then you might try extracting it out of the servicepack files on another computer to make sure you get the right version.

Here is a version table for you incase you get confused about a version:

NTDLL.dll

Windows XP Pro Ver. 5.1.2600.0
Windows XP SP1 Ver. 5.1.2600.1106
Windows XP SP2 Ver. 5.1.2600.2180
Windows 2000 Pro. Ver. 5.0.2163.1
Windows 2000 SP1 Ver. 5.0.2195.1600

Hope that helps you with your problem. Goodluck with fixing it.
 
There is nothing on the new drive, so how could there be a software malfunction? It's a brand-spankin new hard drive, just waiting to be formatted. Windows hasn't been installed yet...thus my reasoning of a hardware malfunction. Any other thoughts?
 
Did you disconnect the original drive (that your were having problems with) when you installed to the new drive. Its possible you accidentally either installed to the old drive again or that in your bios the old drive was the primary and the new drive was secondary and the old drive was the first drive in the boot order causing it to boot from the old drive even though you installed to the new drive.
 
Yes. I disconnected and took the drive out of the case, and put the new one in, so there should be no way it got onto the new drive, unless it flew out of it and into the new one :cool:

Edit: I also checked the bios first...the primary boot device is the new drive.
 
Well then we shall troubleshoot hardware. I'm assuming you have no type or form of RAID going on and that you aren't running the drives off of a raid controller.
First off, have you run memtest86+?
You can download it here. I figure you'll either want the precompiled ISO image or the floppy download for dos-win.

If you don't turn up any memory errors after running 10 passes (or 10hours whichever comes first), then your memory should be good.

Next, I recommend using the Western Digital diagnostics utility. See if it can recognize your harddrives and format them to setup for an NTFS partition for Win XP. If the diagnostic utility shows no errors or problems, then I would try to reinstall windows after it has set up the drive. If you encounter the same problem again, then I don't have a clue what it could be, unless you can provide more information about the problem (maybe a memory dump).
 
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