Missing or corrupt hal.dll

[willeigh]

Booting into windows I received this message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root> \system32\ hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file.
Cant start in safe mode (get same error )and for some reason my Norton GoBack does'nt have any points to restore to. Would prefer not to reformatt. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

[inyourface1650]

HAL =
Hardware Abstract Layer. Thats a pretty damn important file.... You COULD try repair....but Im still not sure if that overwrites the My Docs folders and such ( I dont use em). I would recommend pulling the drive, sticking into a desktop, pulling the data, and reformatting.

[DocX36]

Do you have a backup of your BOOT.INI file? Perhaps restoring this to your PC will fix it... It sounds like some partition information may have changed.

What have you changed in your system? Added/Remove drives perhaps? You don't list what you done BEFORE this happened...

-Doc X

[willeigh]

Do you have a backup of your BOOT.INI file? Perhaps restoring this to your PC will fix it... It sounds like some partition information may have changed.

What have you changed in your system? Added/Remove drives perhaps? You don't list what you done BEFORE this happened...

-Doc X
I ran a program called Privacy Guardian(delets cache and cookies and ovisously boot.ini too) which I have used many times before on both machines.

[willeigh]

f**k it, nothing is working from everything I have tried. Could have reformatted by now and reinstalled half of my stuff from the time I have wasted. Reformatting now:'(

[willeigh]

still having problems. while typing a word document it decided to start a shutdown and hang at the logon screen and some programs hang up during install. could this be hard drive related?

[dlinkin]

To run scandisk.
Go to; Start, My computer, Right click your HDD, Select Properties, Tools, Error checking, check both boxes and close properties.
Go through this process twice in a row, don't restart yet.
Setting it to check just once doesn't work every time.
Restart then let it scan for bad sectors.

Now you should run system repair.
- Put in your reinstallation cd
- restart
- press F12 at the dell screen when you see F12 in the top right corner
- select to boot from cd
- Press R when asked if you want to install Windows or Repair Windows
- when you see 1 in the top left screen, type 1
- press enter for admin password if you don't have one,
- then type CHKDSK /R and press enter.
It'll repair your OS now.
After your finished, do CHKDSK /R again. To make sure your error free.

Yes it could be hdd related.
Spinrite would tell you.
Spinrite costs a mint though. Get it at grc.com.

[willeigh]

Now you should run system repair.
- Put in your reinstallation cd
- restart
- press F12 at the dell screen when you see F12 in the top right corner
- select to boot from cd
- Press R when asked if you want to install Windows or Repair Windows
- when you see 1 in the top left screen, type 1
- press enter for admin password if you don't have one,
- then type CHKDSK /R and press enter.
It'll repair your OS now.
After your finished, do CHKDSK /R again. To make sure your error free.

Yes it could be hdd related.
Spinrite would tell you.
Spinrite costs a mint though. Get it at grc.com.
did this already when I first got the missing hal.dll error. didnt find any bad sectors.

[dlinkin]

You tried CHKDSK /R ?

Spinrite is a profession hdd mantenance tool.
It finds and corrects on a different level than scandisk does.
You boot with the spinrite cd in, and it can be used on any pc.
Choose test # 2.

Scandisk checks for bad sectors, it's different than CHKDSK /R

[willeigh]

yea I did chkdsk /r from the recovery console. Something else wierd happend. when I ran the recovery console, it was reading my drive as I: instead of what it really was C:. It read the 4 slots for my card reader on my monitor: c, d, e, f. My 2 cd/dvd drives: g, h. Then I: as the local disk. Why did it see it as low priority? Going to check p2p's for spinrite.

[Computerguy]

I have encountered this problem before and the only way to fix it was to reformat the computer.

[dlinkin]

He did that.