PC won't boot

[Kinky]

My PC won't boot up.

It tries to and then throws up an error about a missing or corrput hal.dll file.

It's windows XP home and it won't boot from the CD drive.

Does anyone have any ideas or any tools I can download to make a bootable floppy disk to access the CD drive to access the repair tools on the Win XP cd.

Many thanks in advance,

K

[FourWheelDrift]

Can you boot it into safe mode?

F8 after the memory/HDD check.


PS - explanation of missing hal.dll message - www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

>> Edited by FourWheelDrift on Saturday 10th September 19:22

[FunkyNige]

Googling hal.dll gives quite a few sites with fixes, this looks OK -

Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD.
At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file
Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it
Take out the CD ROM and type exit

[trevorw]

This may also be of use aswell,

www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm

[smp]

FunkyNige said:

Googling hal.dll gives quite a few sites with fixes, this looks OK - Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD. At the first R=Repair option, press the R key Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair. Typically this will be #1 Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it Take out the CD ROM and type exit

This solution gets has worked on a few occasions at work.

Out of interest, are you using a seperate RAID controller card ? Our problem turned out to be cheap cards causing crashes - solved by purchasing decent cards . . . .

Simon

[Kinky]

Thanks for the updates folks ....

Booting up in safe mode, etc, etc [via F8] produces the same error.

The issue I have is getting to the CD drive.

It won't boot with the CD (nor with my old win 98 CD).

My win 98 boot [floppy] disk does not work either.

Once I get to the CD it looks like I'm sorted [thank you all]. It's just getting there .....

K

[Fish]

WHat do you mean you can't get to the CD? Have you set the BIOS to boot from CD first. right at the begining press F2 or Del as the screen prompts and once in the BIOS, (looks old fashioned dos) find the Boot options and set it to boot from CD ahead of the HDD.

[Kinky]

Fish,

Yeah - done all that ..... changed the boot order to CD, floppy then hard drive - still no luck.

The CD drive is getting power to it as it reads it first.

I just need a boot disk with CD support to get to the CD drive, to read the CD.

I think I'll have a go at digging out my old PC, and connecting up the hard drive as a 2nd drive and see if I can access the contents that way.

K

[doug phillips]

Have a look at www.bootdisk.com, it could help.

Doug.

[Kinky]

Cheers Doug - interesting site.

Anyhow, as a result of that, I downloaded a tool called "ntfs4dos" and I can now see my c: drive and copy files to a USB 20gig drive .....

Only downside being you can only copy 1 file at a time, and I've a few thousand to do .......

Using the "copy *.*" only picks up the 1st file - not every file. *. makes no difference.

A few long nights ahead ..... but at least I'll have my data.

K

P.S. Move, xcopy and xcopy32 don't work either.

[doug phillips]

No problem , strange about the xcopy have a hunt on the net for an old copy of pctools (it had a dos based highlight/copy file manager type of thing).

Doug.

[doug phillips]

After a quick hunt on the net I could not find pctools, but have a look here www.xtreefanpage.org/x13avwj.htm , for a Xtree clone ( it could speed up the job, copying your data).

Have fun .

Doug.

[Plotloss]

The HAL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer.

Its the set of windows components that allows windows to talk to the hardware via the motherboard.

If its hosed I'd be expecting all sorts of oddities whatever you do, to be honest.

[ErnestM]

Try switching the interface cable on your CD drive. You would be surprised at how easily they break.

ErnestM

[Kinky]

Thanks for all the replies guys .... looks like a busy evening ahead trying everything

I've managed to acquire a spare PC from work, so worst case I'll remove the drive and install it as a slave drive on the other machine (if I can work out the jumper settings)

I'll update tonight if I have any luck, for future reference.

Many thanks again,

K

[Kinky]

Just to close this one off .....

I went straight to Plan Z, which was to connect the drive to the other PC as a slave.

The machine booted up, then reported that the slave was suspect and then ran the check disk app. That threw up a TON of errors.

Anyway, it eventually finished, and I was able to access it ok. Managed to get all my data off OK.

I then ran a full virus check on the drive, and it was 100% clear!

Put the slave back into the original PC and re-booted, where it threw up a ton of errors and again would not boot, stopping on the NRLDR file (I think that's what it was). Anyway - stuck there and nothing would fix it.

I ended up getting a set of master recovery disks, which worked a treat.

So all done and dusted - but boy oh boy what a nightmare. I would not wish this upon anyone.

And lesson learnt - back up you data and make sure you have the ability to restore the factory install.

And thanks to you all for all your help and support.

K

[__Lee__]

If this happens again I would download a linux CD that you can boot too. A good one is knoppix which boots off a CD and acts as a operating system running everything from memory/CD and makes no changes to anything on the HD.

NTLDR is a common one to go corrupt.

[Kinky]

Lee,

Interesting you mention Linux ..... I've always debated installing it.

Never had the confidence/balls/guts to do it.

Actually - I've got a space PC .... I wonder if I could stick it on that?

K

[__Lee__]

Try this version.

It makes no changes to your hard drive.

Just download it, burn it to a CD and then boot to it and you can have a play without changing anything on your hard drive.

[Bodo]

Kinky said:

Lee, Interesting you mention Linux ..... I've always debated installing it. Never had the confidence/balls/guts to do it. Actually - I've got a space PC .... I wonder if I could stick it on that? K

The one Lee proposed is good for having a peek at Linux without installing it. You remove the Knoppix CD and no traces are left.

When you want to check everything with a complete installation, then download a Linux distribution like Suse. It comes for several CDs or one DVD. There are versions with phone support and printed handbooks available at bookstores and computer stores.

A friend of mine uses both Linux, and Windows on one computer. She selects what she wants to use at boot time. She uses Linux since she has broadband for everything internet: email, browser and VOIP/chatting without having to fear threats to malware like viruses, spyware, trojans, etc.
On Windows, she uses software that she is used to, and couldn't find an acceptable alternative for her on Linux for.
She exchanges files between both systems on a shared partition, which can be read and written on from both systems.

Installation, even beside Windows, is straightforward on the newer popular distributions like Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, Mandriva, ...