Sudeen problem with XP Home

[Joe]

Hello...

Imagine my surprise when I turned on my (less than 6 months old) PC
with Win XP on it and saw:

"invalid boot.ini"

and then...
"hal.dll" (or"bal.dll"...not sure which now) in "c:
(something..._\system32"

I have been VERY conservative with this machine... not downloading &
intalling new software willy-nilly as I often did on my previous win95
and win98 systems. This was SUPPOSED to be my 'bedrock' PC...and now
(after having to do a System Recovery, and loosing ALL my paid for and
registered programs... I've just about had it.

Yes, I did save the registration info on the software, and yes, I'm
going through the slow, aggrivating process of manually deleting all
the (now useless) software from the 'programs' menu, and then going
into C: and deleting their folders, since these programs are no longer
listed in "add/remove programs", and then RE-installing/registering
them.

Yes, I had Norton Anti-virus running, along with Norton Personal
Firewall... but at this point, I think that the XP in Windows XP,
should stand for
eXtra Poor.

Can anyone tell me WHY this problem occurred, and (perhaps) a way to
avoid it in the future?

My system is not 'dual boot', and only has one physical hard drive
(split into two logical drives... a "D" drive containing the XP
software that came with the computer. (Thank God I had backed up this
software to 7 CD/R's, or I REALLY would have been in ths soup.)

Thanks for letting me VENT...and I'm looking forward to any insight
you an give.

Joe
Oh... one other question... my system had been getting regular 'hot
fixes' all along, so you can imagine my surprise when I went to
Windows Update after re-installing XP, and found over 21 megs of
'critical updates'! I thought the hot fixes accomplished the same
things as going to Windows Update.

 

[DL]

You could have tried 'Google' before going to the extream.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm
David

 

[Alex Nichol]

Imagine my surprise when I turned on my (less than 6 months old) PC
with Win XP on it and saw:

"invalid boot.ini"

and then...
"hal.dll" (or"bal.dll"...not sure which now) in "c:
(something..._\system32"

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. Why it got damaged is impossible to say

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