Attempting to dual boot causes my computer to throw up hal.dll error!
djshowdown
London
Hey guys
I have been trying to install another copy of windows to a separate partition in order to separate my music programs from my general stuff.
I have an 80GB Seagate drive that used to have two partitions. C: was my system drive and took up about half the drive and there was a D: data partition that was just used for saving general data
Anyways, to cut a long story short I copied that D: partition to another physical drive and then formatted the second half of my 80GB Seagate. I renamed the second half of the Seagate drive H: and then rebooted from my XP disc to try to install the OS. It got as far as copying the files over then just decided to reboot
When it did reboot it came up with the same Windows installation screens, so I walked through it to see what would happen
It was displaying my C: drive as D:
It displayed my H: drive as E: I think and it displayed a whole other external drive (whose drive letter is currently Q: ) as C:
I then decided to just take out the installation disc and boot up and was greeted with the "<root>\system32\hal.dll the file is missing or corrupt" error
So I googled it on my laptop to find out what it was
The repair suggestions on there weren’t working so I hit F8 to take me to the safe mode menu and chose last known good config
It now gave me the choice of 3 os' (even though I only currently have one)
I chose the bottom one and it worked
I then went and accessed my boot.ini file to see that there was two new partitions added (the failed install and another one)
So I went to msconfig and clicked check paths and the two that didn’t and it brought up a message stating that they led to os' that weren’t there and would I like to remove them, which I did
Rebooted and everything was fine, still with just one operating system
I thought it must have been because of my changing of the drive letters, so this time rather than assigning a drive letter I used partition magic to delete the partition altogether and leave it as unpartitioned space
Booted from cd and attempted to install with the same consequences, one OS and a non booting system
So I did the same process and now I am totally stuck
I have done a bit of reading and apparently partition magic does create some problems when doing this sort of thing
Does anybody have any ideas?
I have been trying to install another copy of windows to a separate partition in order to separate my music programs from my general stuff.
I have an 80GB Seagate drive that used to have two partitions. C: was my system drive and took up about half the drive and there was a D: data partition that was just used for saving general data
Anyways, to cut a long story short I copied that D: partition to another physical drive and then formatted the second half of my 80GB Seagate. I renamed the second half of the Seagate drive H: and then rebooted from my XP disc to try to install the OS. It got as far as copying the files over then just decided to reboot
When it did reboot it came up with the same Windows installation screens, so I walked through it to see what would happen
It was displaying my C: drive as D:
It displayed my H: drive as E: I think and it displayed a whole other external drive (whose drive letter is currently Q: ) as C:
I then decided to just take out the installation disc and boot up and was greeted with the "<root>\system32\hal.dll the file is missing or corrupt" error
So I googled it on my laptop to find out what it was
The repair suggestions on there weren’t working so I hit F8 to take me to the safe mode menu and chose last known good config
It now gave me the choice of 3 os' (even though I only currently have one)
I chose the bottom one and it worked
I then went and accessed my boot.ini file to see that there was two new partitions added (the failed install and another one)
So I went to msconfig and clicked check paths and the two that didn’t and it brought up a message stating that they led to os' that weren’t there and would I like to remove them, which I did
Rebooted and everything was fine, still with just one operating system
I thought it must have been because of my changing of the drive letters, so this time rather than assigning a drive letter I used partition magic to delete the partition altogether and leave it as unpartitioned space
Booted from cd and attempted to install with the same consequences, one OS and a non booting system
So I did the same process and now I am totally stuck
I have done a bit of reading and apparently partition magic does create some problems when doing this sort of thing
Does anybody have any ideas?
0
Comments
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsf/p/fixboot.htm
http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp
If that fails, try this and skip to the end to find an alternative step 3 before continuing:
http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_install_windows_xp
the healthy install of windows which is located on C: shows up as D: and the messed up copy which is on H: shows up as E:
help!:(
Trying the fixboot command (which is included in the 8 step process previously referenced) just might resolve the problem if it's simply a matter of the boot.ini pointing to the wrong partition when you select the second OS. The boot.ini on C: should be controlling the settings for the main bootup menu, which includes the option to boot from the other partition. This fix matches your symptoms.
The other thing to keep in mind is that memory card readers can sometimes get an assignment you may not want, so if there's a memory card reader I suggest disconnecting it then reconnecting after the install.
Sorry if this has nothing to do with your problem, but it's all I can gather based on what I've gleamed here.
i dont think it helps that i have like 5 hard drives
i have three internals and 2 externals
both externals are now unplugged
could it have anything to do with the fact that D: is already taken?
it keeps trying to make the new partition the D: drive by default if i am to believe what it says in the windows setup screens
i have just changed my D: drive which is used for data to my I: drive
i will now attempt to install my second windows partition for the millionth time
anybody got any ideas in the meantime as i hold very little hope for this attempt
the computer gets as far as the 'this part of the windows installations is completet, the computer will now reboot' then when it reboots it goes back to windows setup as if i didnt just install windows!
the cheek
i really NEED a fresh install for my music
today avg free decided that one of my programs is a trojan and will NOT let me run it
i know it is save but avg free doesnt have an exclude list
aaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!
it gets to the reboot then just loops like it wants me to install
if i take the xp disc out then it throws up the hal.dll error
when i load into windows from the healthy installation i can see that windows partially installs to the other partition and takes up about 400mb
this should give some indication about how far in the installation gets
this is really frustrating
any help would be much appreciated
thanks to everybody who has taken time to comment already your comments have been helpful