hal.dll fun

I recently bought a new computer, pieced it together and installed Windows XPl Windows is installed on RAID 0 Raptor drives. I am having a problem booting to windows because of this miniscule little file. When I boot, I get the message:

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

I have tried using the install disk to repair the Windows installation, to no avail. The only other thing that I can think of is messing with BOOT.INI, but I really dont feel comfortable with the possiblity of messing up and spending hours fixing it.

Interesting discovery, however. If I have the Windows install disk in my main optical drive, it asks if I want to boot to cd (ie: press any key) and after it times out, Windows loads normally. This solution is working so far, but in the long run its gonna be rather irritating.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. The My Documents folder pops up after I start as well, I can't seem to fix that either

Try this solution:

Boot from your CD and follow the directions to start Recovery Console. Then:

Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini
DEL C:\Boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Fixboot

For my documents folder just delete it. It will only remove it from the desktop

OK. I tried that, and I must have messed up somewhere, because now it goes through the boot sequence, and shows the screen where you would select an operating system to boot from, like if you were dual booting. One selection is blank, and the other says Windows XP. It wont let me choose which one, but the blank one is highlighted. After a second, it boots.

I think I know where I messed up, right after running bootcfg /rebuild, it asked me to type in some parameters, which i just left blank. How do I get rid of the other selection?

OK now do the following:

Right click on My Computer, left click on properties, click on advanced, go to startup and recovery, click settings, click edit and change the lines to:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Editon"/fastdetect/noExecute=optin

If your using XP Professional put that in insted of Home Edition

If this won't work here is a link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q289022

Everything runs smoothly now, thanks a million for the help!

Ok, I hate to bring this topid up from the dead, but I'm experiencing a very similar situation.

I got the hal.dll msg, which I then did the bootcfg /rebuild and it all worked fine, for the night. I turn my computer back on and I get the hal message again. So I try the rebuild command again. It appears it's going to work just fine, but then when it gets windows is loading screen (after the little loading bar and the first time you can use the mouse) it freezes.

I've also noticed that it wont save some of my bios options. Mainly, I try to disable booting from a floppy, but each time I restart, floppy is back on top of the boot prioty list.

I'm just confused.

Oh yeah, btw... I'm not oced at all, so I really dont think it's a ocing not working problem.

Thanks

If the computer you're having problems with is the one in your sig, check in the P4C800E-D BIOS under the "Advanced" menu -->JumperFree Configuration. Make sure AI Overclock Tuner is set to Manual, and "AGP/PCI Frequency (MHz)" is set to 66.66/33.33...not "Auto".

Yeah, it is the one in my rig. Yeah, it's set to manual and the pci bus is locked.

I have had it happen before installing raid.For me it was that I had hit f5 along with f6 cause i have really big fingers.When it asks what type of computer I have i just start over.