Harddrive issue on new computer?

[roccenstein]

My brother purchased a computer from www.cyberpowerpc.com and just received it yesterday.  He ordered it without an OS to save some money.  I was helping him set it up as he is not very knowledgeable in regards to computers.  After removing the computer from the box, I connected the power cable, keyboard, mouse, and the monitor, and then powered it on.  After it cycled through power-up, I received a message stating something along the lines of "boot error" and to insert the system disc and press enter.  I first tried inserting my Windows XP disc and after it went through the initial system scans, it showed the message "starting Windows", at which point the screen went blue and displayed the following message:

STOP: c0000221 Unknown Hard Error\Systemroot\System32\ntdll.dll

I powered the computer off and tried again, and received the same message.   I also tried installing the motherboard driver install cd instead of windows, and I still got a boot error message.  Any suggestions?  Could the hard drive be bad?

[xavier]

If you can go into bios and set the bios to start in best known confog. ordefault 7 re boot with OS disc in cdrom drive. is your hard drive recognised in the bios? Also change the boot order in the bios to boot from the cdrom drive .

[drmsucks]

First, you can't "install" motherboard drivers until there is an operating system.

To the problem at hand - the error means that there is a problem reading the CD or writing the info to the hard drive. I would approach it as follows:

1) Make certain that you have the BIOS set to boot from CD.

2) Thoroughly inspect the install CD for scratches, smudges, etc.; clean the CD; try the CD in another system.

Turn off and unplug the computer; ground yourself before touching anything inside the computer case.

3) Remove and re-plug in the power and data cables for the CD and hard drive.

4) Check all other motherboard connections; something could have come loose in transit.