Startup loop: Comp restarts at login screen (HP pav 310n)

[Evie]

Ok, this is what happened:

I have a new hard drive, so I was installing it. I put the
jumpers on Cable Select and made my existing drive the
master and the new one the slave.

The instructions say to go to the CMOS/BIOS to tell the
system there is a new drive.

The bootup screen does not tell you what to press to get
to the BIOS screen, so the instructions (Maxtor, btw) say
to do 'Page Break' to get it to *tell* you what to press.

So, I do that.

The loop begins.

I think it may be the keyboard being stuck (because I
pressed 'break' several times) and I unplug it. Still the
loop.

I go out for the day and when I come home, there is a
message saying that 'hal.dll' is corrupt and has to be
reinstalled.

I manage to put a new 'hal.dll' in, and now the loop is
happening again.

Did I mention that I was not provided a WinXP disk with
the computer? All the files are, of course, on the
computer itself, so I cannot just put the WinXP disk in to
reinstall Windows.

I used the 6 disk boot thing from the Windows Website and
it asked some questions after loading and one was to
repair Windows so I selected that. And that's pretty much
all it did.

Help! (

 

[Guest]

Did you try changing the jumpers on the hard disk to slave
(for the new one) and Master (for the existing one)?
Unless you have the right cable, using the 'cable select'
setting won't work.
email me if you try that and it doesn't work.