Phil said:
I put the hard drive in other computer. It is showing the new added drive. It
has "F" and "G". "G" is the HP recovery portion. Should I try to use G to
repair F ? If so and I click on G will it try to go to my original hard drive
(master) and mess up that 1?
thank you so much for the help so far. It is graetly appreciated.
Well, that is interesting, that everything seems to be there.
Are there any data files on your old C: (F: perhaps) drive that
you want to keep ? If you were to run the recovery function
at some point, I believe that removes the whole C: including
your data files. If there is anything important, you could put a
copy on the machine you're using for this test.
No, don't attempt to use the recovery partition, while it is
on the slave machine.
Some of those recovery partitions, use things like Ghost, or a
similar concept. So in fact, if you had the appropriate tools
and knowledge, you could rebuild a "factory" hard drive, using
your good working computer. But if you were expecting the
right thing to happen by "one-clicking" something, no,
I expect that isn't going to do what you want. Not while
the drive is slaved in your other computer.
*******
OK, so what we seem to have, is a hard drive that works in one computer,
but doesn't work in the other. Your original symptoms mentioned...
"long pause then a message saying file missing or corrupt hal.dll"
so if that was actually an attempt to boot from the C: drive of the
HP a324x, maybe that is the symptom to concentrate on.
I tried a search on
"file missing or corrupt hal.dll"
This is the first hit I got. It could be the boot.ini is not pointing
at the right partition. Or, it could be that the particular file is missing.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm
Knowing what you've been doing to the machine recently, might aid
is determining what to do. Read through that page, and see if
anything you've been doing recently, matches.
For example, I've had a boot.ini screwed up, when I was using some
partition management software. It wrote the four primary partition
entries into the partition table, in a different order than they were
originally (which is not a good thing to do). That caused boot.ini
to point to the wrong partition. I didn't get the hal.dll message
though. That was relatively easy to fix. I first got a picture
of the partition table ("fdisk" partition tool in Linux), then
used a text editor to correct the partition number in the
boot line in boot.ini. It booted right up after that.
Work through the page first, but don't get out the claw hammer
just yet and bang on things... At least some of the recovery
procedures will be taking a chance.
If the drive is placed back in the original computer, the jumpers
set to their original condition, are you able to run the
WD test floppy ? Is the computer able to access the drive, to
carry out that test ? I'd want some confidence now, that the
problem is purely what is written on the hard drive, and not
some external influence.
In any case, you're not going to be able to use the recovery
partition on that drive, unless something is working. And
at this point, I'm not recommending that. If, on the other hand,
you're in a hurry, and none of the data on the drive is worth
keeping, then you can always carry out your plan. You'll need
to look in your user manual for the computer, to find what
F key to press to start a recovery. If the recovery process
can't boot itself, in the same way that WinXP can't boot itself
(get an error message), then you'll know that some pre-requisite
health issue still exists.
So, to some extent, what you do next may depend on how much time
you've got to spend on it. I'm guessing at this point, that
it could be repaired, without "using the hammer". But if this
method of communication is too slow to get the job done, then
you can always carry out your plan.
Since F: and G: showed up on the other computer, that implies
there is nothing wrong with the partition table. It doesn't
guarantee that the entries are in the same order as they
used to be in. So it doesn't prove all aspects of what is
on the drive are correct.
While you've got F: and G: available to you, do a search
and see if you can find one or more copies of hal.dll.
According to my Device Manager, the first file here is the
one the system needs. I don't really think this file has gone missing.
C:\windows\system32\hal.dll
C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\sp3.cab (copy inside the cab file)
To look at the partition table on the disk, you can use this tool,
selecting the hard drive from the menu. Unzip and run the executable.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
The size in sectors, at the end of each line, should give you some idea
how big the partition is. In the following example, the second partition entry
is 20971520 sectors, and multiplying by 512 bytes per sector, gives
10,737,418,240 bytes. So if I knew my C drive was 10.7GB, then I'd know
it was the second partition entry.
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c5/ghostimage/PTEditVista.jpg
The permissions on the boot.ini file on the F: drive, may not make
it possible to check easily. On my system right now, I have two
boot drives, and if I go to open H:\boot.ini, I can do it. The
second disk is my Win2K disk. In this example, you can see the
partition with Win2K on it, is partition 1, as in the second
entry in the partition table. I would change the "1" to some
other value, if my partition table got screwed up.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
Try a few things, and post back what you think may have caused it.
Or perhaps someone else knows how to solve this faster than I do
and they'll give a few suggestions
HTH,
Paul
