Serial ATA and Corrupt hal.dll in Windows Xp

[simonracioppa]

Hey,

Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for this doozy of a
problem.

I've recently build an Athlon 64+ machine on an Asus A8V board, using a
Maxtor Diamond Plus SATA hard drive. Everything was working great
(despite the pain of having to using a floppy to administer the SATA
drivers during WinXp installation).

Then just this morning, I wake up to see that the machine had crashed
and is displaying a "Hal.dll is missing or corrupt" message. Great!
Rebooting the machine always results in that message.

Holding down F8 gets me into the windows startup options, but every
choice (even safe mode command prompt) brings me back to same message
as above. So I can't even get access to the drive to see if the file
really is missing, or to replace it from my CD.

Next, I boot my WinXp disk and using the SATA drivers from floppy, try
and get into the Recovery Console (which takes FOREVER). It drops me to
a C: prompt, but Recovery console doesn't seem to be able to read the
drive - I can't even get a DIR of the drive, much less get BOOTCFG to
work! If I try to have windows just reinstall, it finds the partition
but doesn't go any further than that.

So now I'm kinda stuck. I know the drive still fuctions (somewhat)
because I can get into the F8 windows startup menu. But I can't access
it EVEN from the recovery console... I'm beginning to think that going
serial ATA was a HUGE mistake - it's been nothing but a headache.

So, any ideas on how to save my data? My next plan is to buy another
drive, do a clean install of XP, and hope it can read my first drive
from inside windows.

Thanks!

 

[Bob Harris]

I have had SATA for almost 2 years, and once installed have found them quite
reliable and fast.

As for your current problem, if the recovery console can not see the disks,
then try something more low-level to view them. For example, the disk tools
available form Seagate, Western Digital, or Maxtor all have non-destructive
tests, and they can even sense the presence of unformatted disks.

If these can not see the disks, then the disk is either not there physically
(unlikely), or it is not there electrically. Power off, open the box, and
chekc the power and signal cables. One or both might be loose. ***The SATA
signal cables do not make as firm a connection as do IDE cables.*** When I
was building my PC, I finally used some electrical tape to "help" the SATA
cables stay attached to the disks. The connection at the motherboard was
never an issue for my PC.

If the cables all seem OK, but the disk is still not seen, then try
attaching it to the other SATA controller, preferrably with a new cable. If
that fails, then the disk might hav crashed. Remember that under the SATA
interface, the disk is probably exactly the same as an IDE disk by the same
manufacturer, and those do crash occassionally.

Good luck.

 

[Gene K]

If there is a way around this problem short of a complete re-install of XP,
I do not know of it. Has happened to me twice that I can recall.
Gene K

 

[MeNmyself]

I had problem with Maxtor's Diamond Plus SATA drive.

Had to used MaxBlast (available at Maxtor's website) to reconfigure the hard
drive including partitioning the drive.

Works for now.

Hope this help.

 

[Chris]

Hi, are you overclocking your CPU and have the Sata drive connected to the
Via controller?
ChrisC

 

[Alex Nichol]

Then just this morning, I wake up to see that the machine had crashed
and is displaying a "Hal.dll is missing or corrupt" message. Great!
Rebooting the machine always results in that message.

Holding down F8 gets me into the windows startup options, but every
choice (even safe mode command prompt) brings me back to same message
as above. So I can't even get access to the drive to see if the file
really is missing, or to replace it from my CD.

That message is rather misleading. It happens because the boot.ini file
that tells the boot where to look for 'Windows' is damaged, so it is
looking for files in the wrong place - hal.dll just happens to be the
first one it looks for.

Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard Disk. Boot the XP CD and, instead
of Setup, take the immediate R for Repair. Assume any password
requested is blank, and TAB over.

Use
Attrib -H -R -S C:\boot,ini
DEL C:\boot.ini
to delete the bad one
BootCfg /Rebuild

to search for Windows installations and make a new one