Major boot problem - please help

[Guest]

May be a long post, but I am very exhausted and have
tried fixing this for the last 2 days. I added another
sata drive and replaced the cd-rw with a dvd-rw in my
computer. Before all of this, my windows was fine and
booted fine. Initially I got the error about ntldr is
missing, so I went through the recovery console and
copied them from the CD to the c drive. Now, after
that and even still, I get the hal.dll is missing. I
have search and searched the internet and have tried
all that made sense and all I could think of. I am not
a computer newbie, but have never ran across the
hal.dll is missing problem before. So, when in the
recovery console, if I do a chkdsk, it comes up empty
handed. I can't even do a rebuild through bootcfg. I
am running XP Pro on an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe with 2 ide
hdd on ide 1 and then a dvd-rw and zip 100 on ide 2.
The board itself has 2 SATA connections and before
adding this other SATA drive, the one SATA that was
already there when the computer was running and
booting good was on SATA 1. This is not a RAID setup.
The initial sata drive is a raptor 74gig and the
second one that I added was a Maxtor 250gig. Now here
is the tricky part, my 74 gig raptor drive was
partioned to a 30 and a 40 gig partitions with the OS
on the 30 gig partition. When I originally encountered
this problem, I tried a fixboot and a fixmbr through
the recovery console, but nothing. I am now starting
to wonder if my SATA drives are even being seen. I
believe everything is installed exactly like it was
prior to this has far as what drive were on what
channels and all. I even tried switching things
around, disconnecting the IDE drives and just trying
to go off of the SATA drives, but no luck. Again, I
have searched all over and have read many posts in
many forums, just am not finding any fixes for my
problem. One thing I did notice that in some of the
other posts I found while searching, it sounded like
some people were actually in safe mode or something, I
can not even boot into safe mode. Can anyone please
help me here? I hope I have provided enough info. Have
exhausted all resources. Please post anything you can
thijnk of that I have yet to attempt? Thanks much and
hope to hear from many of you or at least one that can
solve this crazy problem of mine.

 

[Ron Sommer]

Have you tried disconnecting the new drive?

 

[Trax]

|>May be a long post, but I am very exhausted and have
|>tried fixing this for the last 2 days. I added another
|>sata drive and replaced the cd-rw with a dvd-rw in my
|>computer. Before all of this, my windows was fine and
|>booted fine. Initially I got the error about ntldr is
|>missing, so I went through the recovery console and
|>copied them from the CD to the c drive. Now, after
|>that and even still, I get the hal.dll is missing. I
|>have search and searched the internet and have tried
|>all that made sense and all I could think of. I am not
|>a computer newbie, but have never ran across the
|>hal.dll is missing problem before. So, when in the
|>recovery console, if I do a chkdsk, it comes up empty
|>handed. I can't even do a rebuild through bootcfg. I
|>am running XP Pro on an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe with 2 ide
|>hdd on ide 1 and then a dvd-rw and zip 100 on ide 2.
|>The board itself has 2 SATA connections and before
|>adding this other SATA drive, the one SATA that was
|>already there when the computer was running and
|>booting good was on SATA 1. This is not a RAID setup.
|>The initial sata drive is a raptor 74gig and the
|>second one that I added was a Maxtor 250gig. Now here
|>is the tricky part, my 74 gig raptor drive was
|>partioned to a 30 and a 40 gig partitions with the OS
|>on the 30 gig partition. When I originally encountered
|>this problem, I tried a fixboot and a fixmbr through
|>the recovery console, but nothing. I am now starting
|>to wonder if my SATA drives are even being seen. I
|>believe everything is installed exactly like it was
|>prior to this has far as what drive were on what
|>channels and all. I even tried switching things
|>around, disconnecting the IDE drives and just trying
|>to go off of the SATA drives, but no luck. Again, I
|>have searched all over and have read many posts in
|>many forums, just am not finding any fixes for my
|>problem. One thing I did notice that in some of the
|>other posts I found while searching, it sounded like
|>some people were actually in safe mode or something, I
|>can not even boot into safe mode. Can anyone please
|>help me here? I hope I have provided enough info. Have
|>exhausted all resources. Please post anything you can
|>thijnk of that I have yet to attempt? Thanks much and
|>hope to hear from many of you or at least one that can
|>solve this crazy problem of mine.

You can try bootcfg /rebuild
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

This assumes your boot.ini is screw'd up.

 

[Guest]

Try the following link

http://win-xp-sp.blogspot.com/2004/11/invalid-bootinimissing-or-corrupt.html

Raj

 

[Guest]

I have not tried yet to disconnect the new SATA drive. Although earlier when
I did a bootcfg /list, it only showed the 2 IDE drives and not the SATA
drives. Like I said earlier, the OS is installed on the Raptor 74gig SATA
drive on SATA 1. Are SATA drives supposed to be listed here? I did check my
BIOS, and from what I see, I do have the SATA controller enabled. I also
double checked the boot order, and the first things that is set is SCSI. But
again, nothing has changed in terms of the OS or BIOS settings. Just added
another hard drive. Any other suggestions with this new info? Thanks much.

 

[Guest]

Can't anyone else4 provide anything more? Would be much appreciated.