My computer keeps shutting off, I have booted the computer with a windows 98 boot disk, reinstalled xp with my hp recovery disks and it still shuts off, now it's saying its missing, Windowsroot>\system32\hal.dll, and to reinstall the file, how do I get this file? I have installed xp with the recovery disks over and over, I have erased the hard drive and reformatted and everything and it still shuts off. My HP 512c is only a year and a half old and i wonder if it is even worth my time to try and fix it or get a new one. I have been working on it for days.

The hal.dll file should normally reside in C:\windows\system32 folder. Check there and see if it is or is not there. My guess is that it is there and windows is trying to tell you something else. Windows has been known to become confused on occasion and the error may be something else entirely. You mention your HP512c. This is a printer and you make no mention in your post about what the problem is there. Have you downloaded XP drivers for it from HP?

My computer is a hp pavilion 512c, it's not a printer. I have no idea how to get into the system32 folder. All my computer does is go to a black screen and says it's missing that I file. I can press f8, f1 to get into my bios but that's it.

go into setup and change the boot order to boot from your xp cd. choose the option for clean install (not upgrade). at the welcome screen press enter (not repair). select current installation then press r to start repair process. this should refresh your system files and your existing data and settings should be acessable again. go back into set up and change boot order back to a:,C; cdrom instead or starting repair process you might want to reformat and do a full install.