DeadXP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fred
  • Start date Start date
F

Fred

Hope this doesn't duplicate, but I waited 15 minutes for
the first to appear.

Computer is(was) running XP Home upgrade from W98.
Standard setup - 2 HDD IDE 0 pri and sec.

System partition D: was full and I couldn't install
Partition Magic to change the sizes, so I went in and
deleted some stuff using Explorer. While I was at it I
erased the contents of the Z: parition which had some old
windows stuff on it.

Rebooted after using Cleansweep and after POST got:

INVALID BOOT.INI FILE
BOOTING FROM C:\WINDOWS\

Next message is:

WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING FILE IS
MISSING OR CORRUPT:
WINDOWS ROOT\SYSTEM32\HAL.DLL
PLEASE RE-INSTALL A COPY OF THE ABOVE FILE.

Now, for the complications - C: partition was being used
as a games parition. The system files were kept on D: in
the perhaps misguided opinion that most software will
default to C:. There a few people who have admin
privileges for installation and thought this would keep
the system partition from filling up with software.

So, XP will not start because of the deleted Z: part.
reinstalling W98 only gives the options of installing to
C: or D:. Don't really want to overwrite the contents of
either and Z: partition is not given as an option.

Is there a floppy boot prog that will undelete Z:?, or can
I somehow force the installation of W98 to Z:?, or ....??
 
98 will only install to C so thats not an option. You could do an inplce
upgrade of the XP installation to resolve the HAL marrying issue you are
seeing though. Boot XP CD ,Enter for install, F8 for EULA, R when it finds
the C:\windows directory for XP.
 
Back
Top