G
Guest
Hi,
I will try to be brief, but...
I am dealing with a computer that has been working fine for quite a while.
When it was turned off last week everything was fine. When my wife turned it
on the next day it wouldn't boot stating that the hal.dll was missing or
corrupt. She turned it off and left it that way. I checked it out later and
this is what I know:
1) It's a dual boot system, XP Pro and XP Pro, I don't know why. The
installation they had been using is the one with the hal.dll boot error. The
old installation works OK.
2) When you're in the old installation Windows shows 2 hard drives. The
first is partitioned. The second is not. Therefore drive(0)= C & D,
drive(1)=E. The old XP is on C:\, the new one is on F:\. The boot files are
on C:\.
3) The boot.ini file originally used the signature() syntax. Again, I don't
know why. Maybe it's leftover from a previous Win2K intallation? Maybe
because the E: drive is fairly large? AFAIK, they are just IDE drives.
4) Recovery console finds C:\windows and D:\windows. Rebuilding the
boot.ini file produces multi() instead of signature() but it still doesn't
work. Unfortunately, I can't recall if the rebuilt lines worked for the old
installation.
5) As expected, replacing the hal.dll with one from the working installation
made no difference.
6) My wife later noticed that the second drvie was disabled in bios. She
enabled it and rebuilt boot.ini. It didn't work and she says it produced an
scsi() line instead of multi() or signature()?
I think that rebuilding the boot.ini doesn't work because XP and recovery
console don't enumerate the drives the same way. I'll try enabling the
second drive in the bios and reverting to the original boot.ini, but I don't
think that will work. I'm hoping someone here has a quick fix for this, or
advice on what not to do. Can anyone tell me why this might have happened in
the first place?
Thanks for your help. Sorry if this post seems a little long and
disorganized, I can usually find all the answers to my windows questions here
so I don't post that often.
LDB
I will try to be brief, but...
I am dealing with a computer that has been working fine for quite a while.
When it was turned off last week everything was fine. When my wife turned it
on the next day it wouldn't boot stating that the hal.dll was missing or
corrupt. She turned it off and left it that way. I checked it out later and
this is what I know:
1) It's a dual boot system, XP Pro and XP Pro, I don't know why. The
installation they had been using is the one with the hal.dll boot error. The
old installation works OK.
2) When you're in the old installation Windows shows 2 hard drives. The
first is partitioned. The second is not. Therefore drive(0)= C & D,
drive(1)=E. The old XP is on C:\, the new one is on F:\. The boot files are
on C:\.
3) The boot.ini file originally used the signature() syntax. Again, I don't
know why. Maybe it's leftover from a previous Win2K intallation? Maybe
because the E: drive is fairly large? AFAIK, they are just IDE drives.
4) Recovery console finds C:\windows and D:\windows. Rebuilding the
boot.ini file produces multi() instead of signature() but it still doesn't
work. Unfortunately, I can't recall if the rebuilt lines worked for the old
installation.
5) As expected, replacing the hal.dll with one from the working installation
made no difference.
6) My wife later noticed that the second drvie was disabled in bios. She
enabled it and rebuilt boot.ini. It didn't work and she says it produced an
scsi() line instead of multi() or signature()?
I think that rebuilding the boot.ini doesn't work because XP and recovery
console don't enumerate the drives the same way. I'll try enabling the
second drive in the bios and reverting to the original boot.ini, but I don't
think that will work. I'm hoping someone here has a quick fix for this, or
advice on what not to do. Can anyone tell me why this might have happened in
the first place?
Thanks for your help. Sorry if this post seems a little long and
disorganized, I can usually find all the answers to my windows questions here
so I don't post that often.
LDB