File "HAL.DLL" Missing or corrupted, please reinstall?

RustynutsRustynuts
edited October 2005 in Hardware
My PC has become non-bootable with the above message showing up. I tried booting to safe mode, but still the same message. Tried doing a repair of windows, but for some reason I can't get my DVD drive to boot my Windows XP disk. I'm going to get a spare CD drive and try that (my current CD drive are SCSI non-bootable). Any ideas how to fix? Will a repair or reinstall over the top work?

I believe this is related to my young kids turning off the machine via the power button. I've had the machine corrupted similar to this before (but not the same missing file).

Comments

  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    HAL.dll is your hardware abstraction layer on your PC. Normally this goes nuts when you add a new drive and you're using some sort of disk overlay software (very new hard drive in very old PC). It can also happen with a corrupted boot.ini file. In either case, a repair install of Windows ought to make it go away.

    I'm not so sure about the power button. If you have an old computer (>7 years old) that doesn't support ACPI then this could be the case, but all modern computers support ACPI so Windows XP will interpret pressing the power button as ACPI_POWER_OFF and gracefully shutdown. Unless they hold the button down for 4 seconds...

    -drasnor :fold:
  • RustynutsRustynuts
    edited October 2005
    My PC is only about 2-3 years old. Forget what MB I installed, but I think I have the ACPI turned off in bios? It won't shut down with the power button unless you DO hold it for a few seconds! That's why I think things get corrupted.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    You should turn it on :). Don't let your kids hold the power button like that though, unclean dismounts cause filesystem corruption though it isn't as bad on NTFS (Windows 2k, XP) as it was on FAT (DOS, Win9x).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • RustynutsRustynuts
    edited October 2005
    I have NTFS, but they do this on their own when I'm not around! They're still too young to understand, 3.5 yrs! Both my kids were turning on the PC and even getting onto cartoonnetwork (had it set to my home page) when they were 2-yrs old. :thumbsup:
  • RustynutsRustynuts
    edited October 2005
    Finally got it to boot by borrowing a CD drive. Still don't know why my IDE Plextor DVD burner won't boot an XP disk? Couldn't do a repair as I couldn't find my RAID card drivers. :bawling:
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited October 2005
    Take some time to get yourself squared away and try again. What kind of RAID card do you have? Odds are the drivers are out there.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • RustynutsRustynuts
    edited October 2005
    Thanks, downloaded them at work, rounded up an old copy of SP2 and slipstreamed the bunch. Finally got it to work and downloaded some 33 hotfixes or so after SP2! So far all is well now.
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