The system: Cel500, 128mb ram, single 8g HD, Win2k Pro O/S, no hardware or software changes in the last 3 weeks. (I am new to W2k and clueless) Computer suddenly produces error message, "The Following File is missing or corrupt: windows2000 root>\system32\hal.dll Please reinstall a copy of the above file". I tried booting off the floppy disks for W2k and entering (R)ecover mode. I end up at a c:\windows prompt. I put in W2k CD and typed: expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\winnt\system32\hal.dll I hit enter and I get an 'Access Denied" error. Can anyone please help with where I am going wrong? an I possible extract this .dll from the floppy disks, and if so where can I find it? Thanks for any help. Jay

Install you the os again. a choose fix or repair existing operating system. this work for me.

I had the same problem in my XP machine. I never got any repair option when i booted off the cd. To my surprise even a simple "dir" message would return errors from the command prompt. May be my whole file system was corrupt. May be it was the boot.ini file as people have posted everywhere being the reason for this error. I am not sure. But here is what I did to fix it. I booted off the CD and ran the recovery console. The screen will switch to black and you will be asked which installation to log on to. If you only have one installation you will press "1". Next you'll be prompted to enter your Admin password.At the correct prompt, I ran "chkdsk" command. This command creates and displays a status report for the disk. The chkdsk command also lists and corrects errors on the disk. This fixed my problem.