Ive been through many posts and have only fond 1 post that was close to what i need help with... http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/530792 My problem is the boot.ini has corrupted and hal.dll is missing or corrupted. Ive started windows recovery with the install cd and have tried... -replacing hal.dll -deleting the boot.ini and reinstalling it -chkdsk /r on all of my drives all completes sucessfuly -reinstalling windows (several times) -resetting the bois to default settings ...and so far nothing has worked in fixing the boot.ini, every time i try to rebuild the boot.ini is says that it is missing or corrupted and to try chkdsk on my drives and i have. I did change it so that even if the boot.ini is corrupted it will move on to the bois and boot that way. Now for the last part of my problem. Even if windows has loaded it wont show any of my additional drives (none have windows loaded) it just says that their missing but in recovery, the bios and when the pc loads i can see them. So what do i need to do, hopfuly something other than formatting. BTW by hard drive is a SATA and needs a floppy disk to load the drivers so i can install windows... Thanks.
You will have to have the original XP CD. You may not use a recovery CD. Begin the setup as usual the CD is just preparing the machine for setup of the OS or the use of the Recovery Console. Do not press any keys during the initial phase of this. A blue screen will appear that says, "Welcome to Setup" when you see this screen press R to enter the Recovery Console. The Recovery Console will start and it will ask you which installation you wish to choose. This is generally easy because most users only have one installation on their HDD. Select the installation number and press enter. Now you will be asked to enter the administrator password. If you did not set up a password then just press enter. Once you are at the command prompt type bootcfg /rebuild you will be asked a few questions. The first question will ask you about the version of windows installed. Press Y for yes. The next question will ask you load the identifier. If you are a XP Home user you type Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition if you are an XP Pro user type Microsoft Windows XP Professional There will be another prompt to enter the OS load options. Type /fastdetect this will automatically detect the available options. Once it is finished and you return back to the prompt type exit to restart Windows. That should restore your boot.ini file. If you still need to download the hal.dll file download it from here: hal.dll link
I do have the original XP cd and i have tried recovery but when i type bootcfg /rebuild it fails. Any other ideas? Thanks.
When you type the bootcfg space/rebuild it fails? Try cleaning the XP disk. I can't think of another way to do it. I will do a little research and see if I can come up with an answer. Let me know if cleaning the disk works or if you know someone with an XP disk you can borrow.
Today I gave up on my computer and reformatted. Dont care that i lost everything but now when I try and install windows it blue screens during installation (just after I put in my details and time zone). Any ideas as to what is going on there? Thanks again for your help.
You didn't have to format to put the XP back on the system. I could have walked you through keeping all system files in place. Are you installing on a SATA drive? That could be the problem because the drivers are not installed. If you could check your BIOS and make sure that your boot configuration is set up properly and that it detects the HDD. Let me know if it is a SATA drive that could be an issue. The other issue could be your RAM. You could download and run memtest. http://www.memtest.org/ The last thing to do is to let me know what the error message is on the BSOD. Maybe I can troubleshoot it that way.
I tried installing windows over the top of its self and to a new directory, nothing worked. so i formatted, not that big of a deal but oh well. the bios was detecting the hdd, its a SATA, fine and during start up it was all there. I tried removing a stick of ram (i have 2) and it worked, windows installed no problem. The strange thing is, is that this is the second stick of ram that has corrupted on me and i have also lost 1 or 2 hdds to extreme corruption. any ideas as to what is going on there? Thanks again.
The memory sticks may not be bad. It sounds like your Mboard is bad. If your memory slots have become corrupt it will not read the memory properly. Losing a HDD to corruption could be that either the HDD went bad, or you have a virus in the registry that is corrupting the data on the HDD. Run a chkdisk and then defrag the HDD. The last think that I would do it to download Avast (Freeware AV) http://avast.com/eng/programs.html This AV has the ability to run as the computer is starting before startup programs are activated. The next thing I would do it to run CCleaner. It is an optimizing tool. There are a couple of different scans that it can do. It will search for bad entries in the registry. http://www.ccleaner.com/ Be sure to take the quick tour so that you know what area's to clean. There are some other good cleaners if you need them. Be sure to run the CCleaner in safe mode. Basically there will be no startup programs running. It may not find anything, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Here is a link to find out about different things that cause HDD corruption. http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/baddata.htm Another thing that I just thought of. Your original problem with the boot.ini file probably happened because of corruption on your disk to begin with. The fact that we were having a problem getting it restored. I would run a chkdisk and defrag several times. The first run will help. Then run an analysis of the HDD. If it says that you need to defrag do it again. You may need to do it a few times to get the drive back in good repair. Just a thought. Let me know what happens.
