missing hal.dll message

[Jason Frost]

When a friend is booting his PC he recieves "missing or corrupt hal.dll"
message. I have read numerous sites on how to fix this (i.e. checking the
boot.ini file and replacing the hal.dll file).

However, when I use the Recovery Console it does not detect an installation
of Windows - apparently it should ask me for an Administrator password. When
I look for the SYSTEM32 folder it does not seem to exist. Would these
problems be caused by deleting this directory? Could a virus have done this?
Is there any way to recover his files from this before I do a re-install?


Regards,

Jason

 

[Scripter]

Makes me think of Hal 2000 from '2001 A Space Odesy' by Arthur C. Clarke!

It is probable that you will have to reinstall Windows XP, or, if you were
meaning to get round to it at one point, format.

 

[Guest]

When you find out please let me know ..... I have had this happen three times ...... each time I have had to completely reload my system .... I can not figure out what is causing it to happen ..... I thought maybe it was a particular software version I was installing ... since it happened after upgrading my roxio ..... then it happened after I upgraded Norton System Works ..... So leaving both of them off ... and running roxio in an unupdated state .......this time I had just installed Cakewalk Pyro 1.5 and was updating it .... I own all of the versions and have purchased updates for them .... So I do not understand.