hal.dll is not missing or corrupt, boot.ini is fine, any other ide

[Guest]

XP Home installation has started failing on boot (after POST) with flashing
cursor before the select OS screen (3 times now) and I have only managed to
fix it by doing a complete restore from a Ghost 10 image. I do not like to
resort to a sledgehammer like this so has anyone any other ideas for a more
elegant solution?! This is what I have tried so far with no luck:
Restoring the boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect. files
Restoring the hall.dll file.
Rewriting MBR from recovery console.
Restoring the windows directory.
BTW I have tried a boot disk - fails with a message rather than just a
cursor - the famous missing... hal.dll message.
I can' t help feeling that I am missing something! Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[Guest]

HAL stands for hardware abstract layer.

have you done anything with new or old hardware?

How did you try to restore hal.dll?

haven't had much luck with fixmbr either!! Wonder if Win 98 fdisk/mbr is any
better?

can't read your entire subject!! can you put in message text area?

 

[Guest]

It just lost my last word of the subject: "Hal.dll is not missing or corrupt,
boot.ini is fine, any other ideas"

No I have not touched the hardware and I know there is nothing wrong with
the hal.dll because initially I just copied the hal file from the backup I
subsequently used to restore the whole drive.

I keep thinking that there must be something else happening in the boot
sequence (some other file being accessed or something) that is not
documented! I don't believe the problem is with the MBR 'cos a boot disk eill
not work either.

 

[Guest]

can you explain how you restored the windows directory?

 

[Guest]

I used Norton Ghost 10 to restore, from backup, the entire directory
overwriting the existing windows directory and all sub directories (but I did
not restore the $..uninstall..$ directories).

 

[Guest]

this ghost image is being loaded onto exact original computer that it is
taken from?

same processor, ram, HDD, cdrom, configuration exactly?

 

[Guest]

Exactly the same, I have not even breathed on it!