hal.dll file corrupt or missing

[Guest]

Earlier today my computer ran fine, then my son was playing a game... he
closed it out and pressed some buttons and clicked some stuff next thing I
know the desktop has like 25 shortcuts of everything that was on the desktop.
I tried to delete them, the comp froze.. I rebooted into safe mode and
deleted all the extra shortcuts on the desktop. I then rebooted again to try
to start windows back up in normal mode and I got this error "<Windows
root>\system32\hal.dll is either missing or currupt please re-install

I then rebooted into safe mode, found the hal.dll file and clicked
properties and clicked something else on it and pressed allow under all users
and then rebooted again, this time i clicked normal mode and it said pick an
option, instead of saving Windows XP it said Microsoft Windows Whistler
Personal. I clicked it and now my computer is running slow, it takes like
15-20 minutes or something to open (like when I clicked on IE icon it took 15
minutes to open up for me to come here and ask this)... some programs just
wont work when I open them they freeze, like Yahoo Messneger, and when I was
looking online to see how to fix this it said check and see if my boot.ini
file is right so when I did it keeps freezing in notepad so I cant see it.. I
tried restoring my comp to a previous date when it worked fine, still going
slow... What do I do to fix this??

 

[JS]

Suggested sites:
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_repair_a_missing_or_cor.htm
and: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm
and: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/pcrepair/a/missinghal_dll.htm
and: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

JS