I am trying to install WIN XP, but everytime it goes into setup, formats the hard drive, then after the first REBOOT, the system gives an error message that says "HAL.DLL is corrupted or missing" I've checked in the windows\system32 folder and it's there. I copied the file from another win xp and copied it manually but I still get the same error. Any ideas anyone? Please help, this is very frustrating. !! THanks

I found the fix to this problem. 1. It is the corruption of the boot.ini file. 2. To fix it, I did a parallel install of XP to create a new boot.ini file and get access to the PC. 3. I have seen references to booting off of the XP CD-ROM and this works by going to setup and then selecting "Repair". This only works however when the setup program actually sees the installation to repair. In my case it did not, so I did the paralleled install. 4. Using the paralleled install, I modified the boot.ini file so that it would boot off of my old installation and not the new one. This is done by change the reference for the [boot loader] section to refer to the original install folder. In my case, the big issue was that the boot.ini was corrupted by a program called BOOTXP and it was not referring to the correct partition. 5. The only down side is that I had to reactivate XP. After all of this, I am back in business and no thanks to MS Support. They were not sure what to do.

Thanks for the info, but can u explain step by step as to how i would do a parallel install? And I'm not certain as to what exactly to do. Thanks again.

I don't think it has anything to do with the boot.ini. In fact if your boot.ini is corrupt, you could delete it and your machine will boot again. Or create a new boot.ini with text editor. In reference to SJ's problem I am certain that it is a hardware incompatibilty. Can you advise on what hardware configuration you have.

You did not give any info about your system so it is difficult to tell what may be the cause of your problem. This problem occurs while installing windows when you have a SCSI or RAID configuration and you have not told windows setup to load the drivers which you must have on a floppy and point windows setup to them.

I am also having hal.dll trouble. I tried to get round this by copying the dll from a floppy, but then I am informed that file ntoskrnl.exe is also missing or corrupted. There could be more! I have a Mesh PC running an AMD Athlon 1.2GHZ DDR CPU (266 MGHZ|) with 256 MB PC2100 DDR memory (266 MGHZ) I am running Windows XP Home. I was using Compuserve and recently AOL but am now moving to fsnet I have been reduced to leaving my computer on all the time as if I have to "Repair" Windows XP it takes over an hour. Incidentally, the machine does not crash on every re-boot, only sometimes. Any help would be appreciated Alan H.

Would you by chance be using a Promise ATA 133 controler card. If you are then I have the solution for your problem. (it is not the bootini file) although response one did fix his problem. The solution has to do with using the driver for the ATA card from promise tech, and not the more updated driver from XP. I can go into more detail if you let me know more about your system. Roch