Anilrgowda

During normal boot of Windows Vista 32bit it sits at the boot screen (the screen which shows the bar with lines scrolling across and the "Windows (C) 2006 Microsoft Corporation" text) indefinitely. After selecting Microsoft Windows from the boot menu, the hard drive flashes for maybe 6 seconds, and then all activity stops except the lines scrolling in the bar from left to right.
If I try to boot to the recovery console I receive the following STOP error:
STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error
\SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll
Boots to Safe Mode fine. If I boot with driver signing disabled, it sits on the boot screen as a normal boot does.
I have also tried the Startup Repair tool, which simply says it cannot fix the problem. Looking at "View Diagnotic and Repair details" all tests pass successfully and for root cause it says "A recent driver installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from starting."
I also created a ntbtlog.txt file. The last thing listed is "Did not load driver AFD.sys". The last driver it actually loaded is usbprint.sys. I disconnected my Canon USB printer just in case and tried to boot normally again with the same result.
This is on an upgraded Windows XP Pro P4 3GHz 1GB RAM w/ Asus P4C800-E motherboard PC.



Solution
Error Message: STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error or STOP: C0000221 STATUS_IMAGE_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH


This article was previously published under Q101096
SYMPTOMS

loadTOCNode(1, 'symptoms'); The following STOP message appears when a critical system file or other file needed to load Windows is corrupted: STOP: C0000221 unknown hard error
<path>\<file name>
Alternatively, the error may read as follows: STOP: 0xC0000221 unknown hard error
c:\winnt\system32\ntdll.dll (or other specific file/driver)
In Windows 2000 the error reads as follows: STOP: 0xC0000221 STATUS_IMAGE_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH
<path>\<file name>
This error can appear in many different formats, ranging from a blue system error screen to a dialog box. The type of format depends on how much of the operating system was loaded when the corrupted file was detected.
CAUSE

loadTOCNode(1, 'cause'); If you receive this error message, the file listed in the error message is corrupted.
RESOLUTION

loadTOCNode(1, 'resolution'); To resolve this issue, you need to either obtain a new copy of the file or reinstall Windows. If reinstallation fails to solve the problem, a hardware or network problem may exist.
MORE INFORMATION

loadTOCNode(1, 'moreinformation'); The files that are checked for integrity when Windows starts are: •All drivers (except those loaded by the system loader to boot the system)•All dynamic link libraries (DLLs), including USER, GDI, SHELL, KERNEL, NTDLL, CRTDLL, etc.•All DLLs loaded into the address space of the Windows server (video drivers, printer drivers, etc.) This error message can be caused when you install an inappropriate driver for your hardware. For example, this error would appear if you installed a MIPS driver on an X86-based computer.
APPLIES TO

•Microsoft Windows 2000 Server•Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server•Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition•Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server•Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1•Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5•Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51•Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Standard Edition•Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.1•Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5•Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51•Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition•Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1