XP Installation Headache: hal.dll

[Andrew Johnston]

I just added a new 160GB HD to my system, and I want to install XP on a
10GB partition on it and gradually migrate my programs and files to the new
drive while retaining the ability to boot off the old drive until the new
installation is fully configured etc. When I boot off the XP CD and tell it
to create the partition on the new drive and install XP, once the
formatting of the partition is done and the first batch of files has been
copied over, I get an error message telling me that the hal.dll is missing
or corrupt, which stops the installation dead in its tracks.

Searching online reveals that the best solution for this is to go to the
revovery console and use the expand command like so to get the file off the
CD:


expand x:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll

where x is the drive letter of the CD ROM.

The catch for me is that in the recovery console mode, I have no freaking
clue what the CD ROM's drive letter is. In XP, the new partition is E:\ and
the CD ROM is D:\. But when I'm in the recovery console, the new partition
becomes D:\. If I type in


expand e:\i386\hal.dl_ d:\windows\system32\hal.dll

the result is a "file not found" message. Ditto if I use f:\ as the CD ROM
drive letter. Anyone got a clue how I might be able to expand the file
under these circumstances?

I'm pretty sure my Boot.ini is set up correctly (that seems to be the other
typical source of this problem). Any and all advice on how to get to the
bottom of this mess would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Michael]

The expand command is used to extract a file from a cabinet file(.cab). The
hal.dll file is located in cabinet file that resides in the I386 folder. It
is SP1.cab. If you look at the file your trying to get and the one you are
attempting to copy are 2 different files.
expand x:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
hal.dl_ and hal.dll
should be expand x:\i386\SP1\hal.dll
Hope this helps.

 

[Andrew Johnston]

The expand command is used to extract a file from a cabinet
file(.cab). The hal.dll file is located in cabinet file that resides
in the I386 folder. It is SP1.cab. If you look at the file your trying
to get and the one you are attempting to copy are 2 different files.
expand x:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
hal.dl_ and hal.dll
should be expand x:\i386\SP1\hal.dll
Hope this helps.

Hmmm...on my CD, the hal_dl file is a standalone in the i386 folder, and
there's no SP1.cab. I did a search to find all the cabinet files on the CD,
and the closest equivalent was 50SP1.CAB, which was a few levels deep (in
i386\WIN9XMIG\MAPI\). Is that the cabinet I should expand it from?

 

[Michael]

Try this
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

Copy to a floppy then to c drive