Royally messed up my windows

[grimm003]

Earlier today I had linux installed on one partition, and winXP pro installed on another. I was trying to install a newer version of linux by downloading the image file and buring it to cd and booting from it. I know what forum I am in, don't worry. CD wouldn't boot right and would go into GRUB(linux boot loader) normally, so I decided to just try and delete the linux partition from disk management, and boot again from the cd. The partition wasn't the problem, the CD was. Now I was stuck without a boot loader, and couldn't get into Windows nor linux. So I installed XP onto the partition space that used to have linux, but when I did it messed up some of the boot files on my previously working win partition. I have had XP on 2 different partitions working before, but I think it had to do with deleting the partition with boot files. (Not sure if it had the MBR, I had windows installed 1st) I got linux working and have the partition with my original install of XP on it, but I cannot boot into windows. When I had windows on both partitions and tried booting into the older partition, I would get this error: "Error in file <Windows root>\System 32\hal.dll Please re-install this file." How can I got about recovering this partition without formating it? I do have my important stuff backed-up, but it would just take so much work to get everything back the way I like it. I know too much can't be messed up because I never touched the files on the partition. Any help is appreciated, I'm not sure where else I can look for help.

[smokie mcpott]

sometimes its just less work to reinstall windows
you are less likely to get errors later on by going about it all fresh

when it comes to playin around with linux on my main box, i have a couple of old harddrives(small ones 6-20gb). i unplug my rigs drives and pop in the spare, install a distro and off we go...if i dont like it no worries, just format and try another one.

although the preferred method is a separate box :) which i have 'a few' lyin around

[RP Racing]

One reason my dual boot machines need a floppy to boot into linux. I had issues when I used lilo to choose between win and linux before. Couldnt get the MBR to revert to the way it was and said teh hell with it and reformated XP again. Then I went to using the floppy to boot into linux.

[Flamed_Chip]

Boot to the recovery console using a Windows CD, then when asked to choose the windows intsallation to repair, choose the first one, the run fixmbr and reboot. This should reinstall the windows bootloader.

[grimm003]

Thanks for the reply guys, but I am still stuck. fixmbr didn't help at all since I don't think the mbr was corrupt, and where is the fun in just formatting and installing? I think the problem lies in the boot.ini and the hal.dll file. I tried doing bootcfg /rebuild in the recovery console, and it found my windows files but was unable to write them to the boot.ini file. I tried searching my C:\ in RC and I couldn't even find a boot.ini file. Bootcfg /default and bootcfg /add didn't work either. And for the hal.dll file, I found this command should work: expand E:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\WINDOWS\System32\hal.dll but it gave me the error "able to make file hal.dll" Has anyone else had this problem before? I am thinking of trying to make a text file with the information of boot.ini and placing it in my C:\, see if I can go from there.

[grimm003]

Ok well, the fact that bootcfg and the expand commands weren't doing anything leads me to believe there is another serious issue here that will surface even if I do get my boot.ini and hal.dll file in order, so I'm going to cut my losses I guess and format. You win some and lose some.

[snafumaster]

These are the type of issues I love when they come up. Of course not if was my main box, but you get the idea. I'd still try (if it were me) booting to a cd like http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and running one of the NTFS file programs on there and edit or recreate your boot.ini and/or your hal.dll as well.

That's just me.