Hal.dll is missing or corrupt

[Dale]

I just rebooted my Vista PC. When I did, it initially appeared to work. I
signed in to my account and it began loading my profile but seemed to hang.
10 minutes later, all I have is the circle busy icon and still the green
Vista background image. I finally did a hard shutdown by holding the power
switch.

Now Vista will not boot. I get an error that HAL.DLL is either corrupt or
missing. I have done a repair using the installation DVD twice to no avail.

It would take days to re-install Vista and all the software I need to use.
Is there any other way to fix this error?

Thanks,


Dale

 

[AJR]

Usuall cause of the error is failure of the system to "see" the boot
partition. Check BIOS setting regarding HDs.

 

[AlexB]

The typical advice is to do a safe boot if you can get to that screen.
Choose safe mode with internet.

It should be F8 I guess, after the power button is pressed. Try it.

If this does not help there is another option that worked for me when I ran
into a similar situation, should I say, a few times. I wish I knew about
this option the previous times my Vistas crashed. Took weeks to reinstall
VS2005, Sql Server, and so on and so on.

Right after you powered it in press Ctrl+F6 and hold for at least a minute.
If you hear a series of beeps while you pressed you got it, if not this
combination, which is maker specific is wrong and you should try another
one. Turn the poor machine off and do it again.

There is an article on the web, quoted here in forum which I cannot now
retrieve but you can do a search. But the moral of the story is that this
article recommends Alt/Del/PageUp/PgDn instead of Ctrl or whatever else you
may surmise. Also F6 is not fixed. It can be another F.

In the case of my DELL GX-280 I pressed both buttons for about a minute and
then released F6 and I think I kept Ctrl pressed for some time. Soon after
CMOS Microsoft Boot management screen appeared and lo and behold all options
were there. Also this Ctrl+F6 does not seem to be in that article, it is
what I found worked for me, I should contact US Patent Office on this.

It is my understanding that every computer has this secret code for hardware
wakeup.

In the safe mode, go to Control Panel, find a restore point before your
machine crashed and restore it. Reboot.

There may be also an option somewhere, perhaps at F8 alone to boot to the
latest safe configuration. This is a blessing if you got it.

The Backup and Restore management Console (GUI) in Vista has a number of
options like restore windows, restore from the latest backup and something
else.

Don't get nervous if the machine shows you a black screen for a long time.
Go to the bathroom, take a shower, do your shopping, Vista has a lot of
territory to cover before the globe shows up.