Cannot load windows - file not found. how do i get a dos prompt?

[plot]

So... my gf's Dell Inspiron 4100 or something like that is getting this error - cannot load windows "Hal.DLL" not found. no problem, pop in the win98 boot disk... and oh yea, it's NFTS.

so, make the winXP boot disks, pop it in, get to the recovery console... now i'm getting "Access Denied" whenever i try to do something under c:\ ...can't change directories or anything, so what's up with this? i typed LOGON, and nothing came up... just went back to the c:\ prompt.

i want to copy the file over from a good installation of windows XP - (Home edition), to see if that works, but no. i can't gain access to the harddrive, always get "Access denied" for EVERYTHING. So, how do i do it? how do i get access so i can copy files over etc. without booting into windows?

i know her admin pass and stuff, but like i said, LOGON doesn't work.

forgive me for the newbieness of this, never had to do this with XP or nfts before... win98 was so much better in this aspect.

 

[Andrew87]

Put WinXP CD in and boot from it. When it loads up goto the first Repair Installation option (I think it's the Recovery Console). You don't need to type LOGON because it will automatically prompt you for a password (this administrator password may be different to an actual Windows user password). Sometimes the password is blank.

You should now be in C:\Windows\. CD into System32 and then copy hal.dll from the WinXP cd.

If this doesn't work, a repair installation of WindowsXP should work (the 2nd Repair option); but you would need to run Windows Update etc again.