XP - hal.dll missing

D

dragonorta

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2004
Messages
361
Whenever I try to boot into XP, I get:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.


How would I go about doing this?
 
do you dual boot? this boot.ini file can cause the hal.dll to get corrupt on occasion but I'd wager you've got a spyware/virus/somehting problem
boot the Windows operating system CD and choose the option "recover". At the MS-DOS prompt type the following command:

EDIT: check your boot.ini first and make sure it aint toast otherwise the same problem could happen again
Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file
Type bootcfg /rebuild to fix it

the do this for the hal

expand x:\i386\hal.dl_ y:\windows\system32\hal.dll

"x" would be the letter of your CD-ROM drive and "y" the letter of the drive your operating system is installed on


EDIT: I gonna get your gonna end up reinstalling but give it a shot
 
expand wouldn't work, it said file cannot be expanded, so I used copy, which state that Access is denied. how do I gain access?
 
dragonorta said:
expand wouldn't work, it said file cannot be expanded, so I used copy, which state that Access is denied. how do I gain access?
Click to expand...

Did you put a space between the dl_ and Y:\
 
I had that problem once. I reinstalled the file through DOS a number of times ... it was a huge hassle, and in the end, I ended up having to format the drive. :mad:
 
is the hal file there at all or is it completely deleted.. if the file is there then it may not be corrupted it could be that your boot.ini file is toast and thats why it thinks the hal file is missing/corrupt
 
it seems like the boot.ini must be toast, because I deleted the hal.dll and then expanded it to windows\system32\hal.dll from the XP cd, so the hal.dll file is good, but it still says that it is corrupted or missing.
 
i JUST had this problem happen to me and it was a messed up boot.ini
if you find yourself not being able to get into windows, try checking out www.ubcd4win.com.
it will boot into windows for you and you can change the boot.ini to the correct settings.
more than likely it sounds like your system drive has changed.

have you recently added a new partition to your computer by any chance?
 
Yes, I've been trying to get partitions that I need for installing an OS, so I've created a few partitions w/ partition magic in the past week or so.
 
Wow, that's just strange...I just went through this exact issue yesterday with a clients box. Same hal.dll error is missing, and when you go to copy it over in the recovery console it wont let you...to me that was a bit odd. So i pulled out my trusty bartpe config.

Now this may not be your issue, but the client had inadvertently moved half of her c:\windows directory into the root c:\. I used bartpe to boot up and then used its file management util to move all of the files and folders back.

Works like a champ now.
 
dragonorta said:
yes, the hal.dll file is still there. Is there any way to restore the boot.ini?
Click to expand...

in the edit of my first post.. boot to recovery again and rebuild it
 
I have had that error on machines with multiple partitions and had it lead inevitably to a format. I went through all of the rebuilding, expanding, reinstalling, and file copying steps in the world and it just plain did not work. I wish you luck, but in the past I have run into seemingly unrecoverable problems with that.
 
yeah, it seems that I'm going to have to format and reinstall windows. I booted with ultimate boot cd for windows, and the boot.ini is fine as far as I can tell. What would it look like if it was messed up?
 
chkdsk /f

Oftentimes there is a very small, yet corrupt, index that will prevent booting. Chkdsk often catches and fixes that problem
 
dragonorta said:
yeah, it seems that I'm going to have to format and reinstall windows. I booted with ultimate boot cd for windows, and the boot.ini is fine as far as I can tell. What would it look like if it was messed up?
Click to expand...

look under disk management and see which partition is your system drive.
then point your boot.ini to boot from that, even if it is diferent from your windows boot partition
 
well, I tried everything that was suggested in this thread, and I couldn't get any of it to work. So my hard drive is clean and getting a new windows install.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top