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oc went bad :(

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poMONKey

Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2003
Location
mass
i tried to oc a friends athlon xp 2400+ ( looks like a VIA KT333 motherboard ) and ended up loosing ( or corrupting ) a file that xp needs to start ( hal.dll )...

i changed the frequency of his cpu from 133 to 140... didnt touch any other setting, and tried to reboot. it froze up on the 1st post screen, didnt even get to the hdds, just stopped on the memory test. so i rebooted again and tried to get back into the bios, couldnt get past the 1st post screen. if i let the machine just start up, without hitting delete to get into the bios, it would get past that 1st post screen, just to get stuck on the next. so, i decided to pull the cmos battery to see if i could reset things better... this worked, i can get into the bios and all was default again... but now it gets stuck after all post screens and just before windows starts. a screen comes up saying:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.


my questioin is: can i just get this file, put it on a floppy, and reboot... or am i reformatting?

TIA!
 
Can you boot into safe mode? If you can do that then just use system restore.

Otherwise, reinstall - boot off the cd, choose install at first screen, pick the right partition, don't format it, and do a repair install. This will save your old programs, data, and most of your registry settings.
 
wpmegee said:
Can you boot into safe mode? If you can do that then just use system restore.

Otherwise, reinstall - boot off the cd, choose install at first screen, pick the right partition, don't format it, and do a repair install. This will save your old programs, data, and most of your registry settings.

crap when i went corrupt i hit repair right off the bat! and it took me to this black cmd sort of prompt which did no help to me because it couldnt recognize NTFS i guess.

I wish i would have thought to go install and then search for repair..darn oh well you live and you learn.

Zoltan
 
by the way can anyone show a link or something where it teaches how to use winxp repair.
 
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