BSoD error message help...

[mcseguy9]

I have a new Western Digital 80 GB drive (WD800JB). I've used WD's disk utility to create 3 partitions (C: - 8 gigs, D: - 30 gigs, E: - the rest) and format them as NTFS. I've installed Windows 2000 Pro on it (more than once - more on that momentarily) and I'm getting the following BSoD occasionally:

STOP: c0000221 {Bad Image Checksum} The image user32.dll is possibly corrupt. The header checksum does not match the computed checksum... (There's more but I'll stop there)

I first did all of this stuff to the new drive (partitioning it, formatting it, etc.) by connecting it to an existing W2K machine, going into disk manager and creating partitions/formatting from there. When I got the error message I decided to run check disk. It came up with nothing wrong. I re-did the whole things using W2K's partitioning options during setup. I deleted the partitions and recreated them. That didn't work, either. I than used WD's disk prep utility to delete the partitions and recreate them as Fat32 partitions. That didn't work, either. I than used WD's disk checking utility to check the drive for problems. I did a quick test, and extensive test (I think that's what it's called) and than wrote zeroes to the drive. The tests came back saying all was fine with the drive. Not a single error. I've since installed W2K again, and as before all of the latest hotfixes and sp4, and am still having that occasional BSoD come up. It happens at the W2K splash screen with the little blue blocks going across the screen from the to right. Occasionally, when the blocks fill up the bar it happens. It always happens at that spot, too. I went to MS's KB and found this:

MS KB article 101096 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;101096&Product=win2000)

It says to replace the file user32.dll with a newer version or reinstall Windows. Well, I've reinstalled Windows about four times now and that hasn't fixed the problem... I don't know where I'd get a newer version of that file or how to replace it if I did.

I guess I can't figure out what exactly is causing the problem. The MS KB says if the problem persists after reinstalling Windows than it's a hardware or network issue. But the WD utility says the drive is fine. This PC worked flawlessly before I installed the drive so I'm a bit lost... any help would be great. Thanks.

[Midknyte]

did you try another drive just for kicks? I had a fujitsu that would pass all the diags, but would not allow you to boot from any OS. you could use the drive as a slave, but that's it. very strange.

you could also check your memory:
http://www.memtest86.com/

[mcseguy9]

Midknyte, thx for the reply. I have not tried another drive. I have one, the one I replaced. It's a 36 gig Maxtor. I don't know what rpm it is, but hopefully 7200. You're idea is a good one. That drive ran fine without any problems. I'll give that a shot eventually if I can't fix this some other way. As for the RAM test, do you really think that could have something to do with this? I'll give the memtest prog a try. Thanks.

[Midknyte]

bad memory can cause all kinds of weird problems. it's best to eliminate the variables.

[mcseguy9]

The memory tested fine so I don't believe it is that. I couldn't extract user32.dll from the XP cd anyway, so that didn't happen. I spent a couple of hours on this last night. I tried extracting the user32.dll file from two different W2K Pro cd's. I first went into the recovery console and renamed user32.dll to user32.old, than attempted to extract (expand in W2K recovery console) user32.dll from the cd. I wasn't able to expand it into the same folder the renamed file was in. I did expand it into c:\, than tried copying it into c:\winnt\system32 to no avail. It was quite annoying trying this about three or four times with two different W2K cd's. So I ended up renaming the user32.old file back to user32.dll and the system wouldn't boot into Windows. Haha, funny. 8-) Anyway, I resorted to repairing using an ERD. I first tried it using the ERD and that didn't work. It still wouldn't boot into Windows. So I thought I'd try reparing without the ERD and I had it repair all files it found to be different. That worked, at least it got me back into Windows. I reinstalled sp4, IE 6, etc., but all progs and such things remained intact. I figure I'm going to have to wait and see if the repair process fixed the problem. If I get a BSoD like the last one in the next few days (it shouldn't take longer than that) than I'll know it's not fixed. If this happens I'm going to try installing XP and see if things look okay from that OS.

[eros]

What version is your user32.dll ? You can get version 4.00.950
here http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?user32

[mcseguy9]

eros, very interesting. I haven't seen that same error message/bsod since the repair process a week or two ago. If it pops up again I'll definitely check my version and give this a try.