Hi, I've been tearing my hair out the last couple of days with this. I had Win 98 on my machine, and I formatted my hard drive, partitioned it, and put on XP. When I install it, it seems to finish copying and tells me it will restart. When the machine restarts I get a message saying Hal.dll is missing or corrupted, please reinstall it. I've scoured the net for solutions. I tried copying the file again, expanding it with recovery console, fixboot, booting with a 98 boot dusk, typing sys c: and nothing works! I dont know whats wrong, The onlt thing I haven't properly tried is bootcfg rebuild cos when I do it it asks to type in locations of things and other info which I haven't got a clue about. Any help would be very much appreciated! Thanks

The Windows XP hal.dll File Is Corrupt or Missing http://sft-cyber.com/hal.htm This is the Windows "Hardware Abstraction Layer" file and is specific to the individual computer and its hardware. 1. Access the recovery console 2. Try running bootcfg/ rebuild from the console 3. Try Start>Run>CMD. sfc/sfc.exe with the original Win XP disk in place The system file checker (sfc) tool scans all protected files to verify their versions and repopulates the %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache folder with correct versions, as described above. Or , http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm If you get an error regarding a missing or corrupt hal.dll file, it might simply be the BOOT.INI file on the root of the C: drive that is misconfigured 1. Insert and boot from your WindowsXP CD. 2. At the first R=Repair option, press the R key 3. Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair. Typically this will be #1 4. Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file 5. Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it 6. Take out the CD ROM and type exit ============================================ If XP will not install . Try using a different HAL, when set up says to press F6 for third party drivers, press F5 and choose standard pc for the type of computer . If the above HAL fails , more here . http://www.billssite.com/clean.htm http://www.networkcert.net/xp/install.htm http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307848 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811267 Or , Error: Setup Was Unable to Verify Drive You're installing XP Home or Pro, and you get an error message that says: Setup was unable to verify drive C:. Your computer may not have enough memory to examine the drive, or your Windows XP CD may contain some corrupted files. To continue, press Enter. Fair enough, but when you do as it says and press Enter, this message appears: Setup cannot access the CD containing the Windows XP installation files. Ouch! What's going on here? It could be one of several things; check out KB article 822796 at: http://www.winxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=030902CO-Verify

Hi, I recently upgraded a 98 machine to xp and had trouble installing the OS ,it turned out to be a similar problem to what you r having.What it was is that it was looking in the Master Boot Record and seeing 98 but then it could only find XP so the machine gave me a error ,as it turnes out this is common for "bundel" computer.the one i was working on was a Compaq BTW. http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/george/llf.htm Go to this page and scroll down and follow the steps under the heading "Before you do a low-level format". It worked for me... Hope this helps Oz