Terribly frustrated with hal.dll. Please help.

Hi all,

So last week I was reinstalling XP Home with a homemade slipstreamed SP2 disc. Long story short, I get this message after formatting/copying files:

"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."

So, I figure hell, it's probably the CD, so I try the original SP1 disc which I made the slipstream from-- same thing happens.

So I bought a BRAND NEW OEM XP/SP2 disc from the 'egg and popped it in tonight, and I am still getting the same error! What's the problem here?

I've tried all of the fixes I could find on the Microsoft support site and what seems to be available on Google. The problem is that most people get this message when restarting their computer out of the blue. But very few get it on a clean install. So, why's it happening on my clean install?

The system in question:

Athlon XP 2600+
Asus A78VX-X
80Gb Seagate Barraccuda
NEC 3540A
nVidia 6600GT

Any and all help appreciated. Thank you.

Odie

Possible error copying that file???

Try booting to the Recovery Console, and type...BootCfg /Rebuild. The following MSKB article describes the installation and use of the Recovery Console...

HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP (Q307654)

A 'Missing Hal.dll' normally indicates that the partition where Windows is has moved its physical location, so it doesn't appear on the same physical drive (in the sense of where it's connected to) or same partition number as before. So the boot is looking in the wrong place, to load Windows components, and Hal happens to be the first one it looks for.

^^Also disconnect any media card readers you may have. I have seen cases where windows will assign them as c, d ,e ....etc them the hard drive last which caused problems.

Thanks for the advice. Like I said though, I tried all of the Microsoft support techniques in the recovery console and none helped. It just completely boggles my mind why it still had the error after a deep format of the drive with a brand new XP disk.

Just to test, I threw in another drive I had laying around, and XP installed without any issues. So it seems that there is something on that disk that won't allow me to install Windows XP. Could be a virus (though a deep format would theoretically fix that) but perhaps the hal.dll error is a sign of hardware failure as well. Kind of makes sense since it's an error that often comes up for those who heavily overclock.

Oh well...