Windows is fekked

[ilovepiano]

Right, one of my housemates is having issues with her PC. When you turn it on, all you get is this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Pleas reinstall a copy of the above file


And that's all it says, it doesn't ask you to tell it where to look for the file or nothing. Does anyone have any ideas, coz she's got a lot of her uni work on there which she really can't afford to loose.

Chees peeps!

 

[JAZ]

From looking on Google it seems to say that her boot.ini has probably messed up somehow, this is recoverable though it seems.
Try
1. Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
2. At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
3. Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
4. Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file
5. Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it
6. Take out the CD ROM and type exit

If this doesnt help theres a few other solutions depending on the exact problem (was she dualbooting o/s's etc)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=hal.dll

 

[ilovepiano]

yeah I found that earlier, but the version of XP that we all have copies of in our house won't boot from the CD without running all the setup disks that we don't have.

I thought about copying the file from my pc to hers using DOS but there doesn't seem to be a windows directory on her C: drive. Unless I've missed it, but I don't think I'm that blind lol

 

[RetroAndy]

yeah I found that earlier, but the version of XP that we all have copies of in our house won't boot from the CD without running all the setup disks that we don't have.

I thought about copying the file from my pc to hers using DOS but there doesn't seem to be a windows directory on her C: drive. Unless I've missed it, but I don't think I'm that blind lol

I dont want to sound patronising here. But have you selected to boot from cd rom in your bios first so it will reconise the disc before it trys booting from the hard drive.

If you have sorry for suggesting it but sometimes its suggesting the more obvious things that can help

Andy

 

[ilovepiano]

I dont want to sound patronising here. But have you selected to boot from cd rom in your bios first so it will reconise the disc before it trys booting from the hard drive.

If you have sorry for suggesting it but sometimes its suggesting the more obvious things that can help

Andy

Yeah, I don't know what it is about the disc (maybe coz it's a copy) that won't let it boot, without first running a load of floppies that non of us have.

Very strange, I'll think she'll have to take it somewhere to get it looked at, coz I don't want to be responsible for making it worse, unless someone on here can give me a foolproof solution.

 

[johns_ar]

might be worth burning that copy of xp off again in nero but select the option for make this a bootable cd cos itll pick it up straight away then like it would if u bunged a floppy in the drive

 

[Myk]

Only some XP discs are bootable a lot of them simply have update licenses and therefore require a previous MS product to be on the system before allowing the install.

You can't just copy hal.dll I have tried that one myself on various systems. You really need to rebuild the boot section and possible the whole drive both of which need the repair console off the XP CD.

You can:

1. Borrow a bootable copy of XP off someone.
2. Download a full bootable image off Overnet etc to make a new CD.
3. Whip out the drive connect in slave mode to another functional PC and fix it from there.
4. Cry

 

[ilovepiano]

OK cheers guys, I'll try that Nero thing. I wasn't aware that you could make a cd bootable using that. How do you do it? Sorry, I don't mean to sound thick LOL

 

[johns_ar]

i use nero start smart m8 and see below, just click and away u go