hal.dll error

  • Thread starter Thread starter todd
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todd

i woke up this morning and computer was locked up. i forced a hard boot and
during reboot i got a message about the hal.dll file being bad. would not
proceed from there. i used the recovery mode off the cd to reinstall the file
and nothing. i actually restored an old boot.ini file and got past this. now
its still locking up on boot but i cant access any safe modes due to the usb
mouse and keyboard shut off during boot. i've tried fixboot and fixmbr to no
avail. im running xp home edition sp3. i have a new machine with plenty of
memory and drive space.
 
i woke up this morning and computer was locked up. i forced a hard boot and
during reboot i got a message about the hal.dll file being bad. would not
proceed from there. i used the recovery mode off the cd to reinstall the file
and nothing. i actually restored an old boot.ini file and got past this. now
its still locking up on boot but i cant access any safe modes due to the usb
mouse and keyboard shut off during boot. i've tried fixboot and fixmbr tono
avail. im running xp home edition sp3. i have a new machine with plenty of
memory and drive space.
Click to expand...

If you forced a hard boot (does that mean a power cycle?) you
introduce a risk of file system corruption, which in turn can result
in the missing hal.dll file message (it is probably not really
missing), or other trial and error tinkering, guessing and trying of
things - maybe you will get lucky, or waste a lot of otherwise
enjoyable and productive cycles of personal time.

The first thing to do after a power interruption is to boot Recovery
Console like you did (yea for that!), then run:

chkdsk /r

on your boot drive (and others if you have them), and when it runs
clean, start fixing if needed.

It doesn't make sense to try to perform any file manipulation with an
afflicted file system.
 
todd said:
i woke up this morning and computer was locked up. i forced a hard boot
and during reboot i got a message about the hal.dll file being bad. would
not proceed from there. i used the recovery mode off the cd to reinstall
the file and nothing. i actually restored an old boot.ini file and got
past this. now its still locking up on boot but i cant access any safe
modes due to the usb mouse and keyboard shut off during boot. i've tried
fixboot and fixmbr to no avail. im running xp home edition sp3. i have a
new machine with plenty of memory and drive space.
Click to expand...

Hi Todd,

Of course, your primary concern should be making sure your backup copies of
your Valued Data are up to date and secure.

Since you cold stopped the computer, file corruption is possible.
In Recovery Console you should use this command:
CHKDSK /P C:

If C: is your system drive. The /P parameter fixes files. Unless you
physically bumped or dropped the hard drive, you should not need to use the
/R command which does a complete surface scan. If your drive is 60GB or
larger, and/or it has millions of files, the /R scan could take days, rather
than hours. Always try the shorter /P parameter first. Once you start
CHKDSK, you MUST NOT interrupt it. It may appear to be stuck. The percentage
display is not time, but things completed. As long as there is occasional
disk activity, it is still working. (Don't run CHKDSK if a storm's coming.)

The missing or corrupt HAL.DLL message usually does not appear because of an
actual problem with the file itself, but because of a faulty BOOT.INI that
points to the wrong place to look for the file. You restored an old boot.ini
file, and used fixboot, which also should have cured the access problem.
There are 2 main possibilities, (and who knows how many minor ones,) at this
point. There may be other files messed up. You may have messed up a good
HAL.DLL file. The hal.dll file belongs in C:\Windows\system32 folder. There
is more than one version of HAL on the CD, depending on how your computer is
configured, and maybe the generic hal.dll you copied is the wrong one. There
are 2 other files needed to boot the computer, NTLDR, and NTDETECT.COM which
should both be in the system drive root folder, probably C:\ in your case.
You can use "DIR NT*.* /A" (without quotes) in Recovery Console to see if
they are both there. If not, copy from the CD to your root folder. (But if
there were a problem with NTLDR, you should not have gotten far enough to
get the hal.dll error.) In Recovery Console, use "type C:\boot.ini" (without
quotes) to view the boot.ini file. Here is one version of boot.ini--

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXPpro" /fastdetect

(So it would all fit on one line, I substituted "WinXPpro" above, instead of
"Microsoft Windows XP Professional" - note the space before /fastdetect.)

The main question you need to ask is, what was your computer doing the night
before it locked up? What changes were made since the last successful
startup? Was the computer connected to the internet? Got pets? You may have
a Malware (Malicious Software) problem. We need complete error messages,
including text THAT_LOOKS_LIKE_THIS, and error code numbers. After the
fixboot, did you still get a HAL message? Or what?

HTH. (Hope This Helps. :)
--Richard
 
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