Hey,

First, thanks for taking time to read this. I installed Win XP on a system with Win 98 aldready installed, now when I startup I get an error that says hal.dll is not found or is corrupt. It says that I must reinstall the file but we looked for the file everywhere but couldn't find it. Please help!!! (Win 98 is installed on a primary partition and XP on extended with a win 2000 file system)

hmm ... I got something like that now. I've been running Windows XP RC1 for about 2 weeks. Then I had a critical error and couldn't boot in safe mode. So to troubleshoot, I installed Windows 98 on the secondary drive and tried to reinstall Windows XP on the primary from there.

But the download cutoff and I found another way around my critical error. But in the Windows XP boot menu I had three choices, Windows XP, Windows 98 and Windows XP Installation. I figured I could just format the drive but the boot options are still there. And whenever I try to access Windows XP Installation again it gives the hal32.dll error not in (windows folder)\system32\.

So you probably just had an error in the installation somewhere.

And anyone know how to take off the two startup menu options? It's really annoying, it starts on Windows XP Installation by default and gives 5 seconds to change options.

You can edit boot.ini to delete some boot options, but do it carefully.

Start computer on a bootdisk..

go to CD-drive.. have the winxp cd in.. "ex" E:\I386\winnt.exe .. then you run the setup..

i just had this problem on the final

i found it was due to an invalid boot.ini file and can simply be fixed (in my case anyway) by editing the boot.ini and boosting up the timeout time from 0 so u can select either a working enter or a recovery one

=)

Similar problem. I installed XP on a W2K Prof m/c, said I wanted a clean install - not upgrade. After install the 2000 prof option was wiped from boot.ini. I edited boot.ini to put back the option to boot from the W2K prof partition. It now says stsem32\hal.dll is missing. It ain't it' there all right, any ideas??

f---ing XP

so wats up? i got the same error. i m agonna edit it. but another thing is that every 5 or 10 secs the erro comes up "Explorer has caused an illegal error in the fault " i hate that, wats up???

please sum1 help. i m running win me rite now.

In reguards to Response Number 5, If the BOOT.INI file does not point to the correct boot entry for Windows NT, you will get an error stating that ntoskrnl.exe is missing (for XP the file will be hal.dll). Simply correct the partition(x), or rdisk(x), or root directory (WINNT for WinNT/2k and WINDOWS for WinXP) entry in the BOOT.INI file to specify where windows is located.

I had a similar problem. I have 98SE installed on my C: drive, a single partition drive. I installed XP on my D: drive and selected a clean installation, hoping that XP would manage the dual boot. It didn't. At least not very well. XP was setup as the default O/S (not my my choice) and the boot process didn't even give me an O/S selection. I went into the Control_Panel>System and in the "Advanced" tab, under "Startup and Recovery" I clicked "Settings". I futzed around editing the startup options for a while and following all the boot.ini syntax guides and samples I could find I made a few additions to the file. Nothing worked. In desperation I reinstalled 98 on my C: drive, booting from the startup floppy. I wondered what would happen when the install get to the point where it reboots after copying the installation files. Well, it rebooted and there was a Windows 98 option in my OS selector! Not only that, it worked! I completed the 98 installation and confirmed that both O/S's actually worked.

Before doing the same thing, I suggest that you modify the boot.ini so it looks like this:

[Boot Loader]
timeout=30
Default=C:\

[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"

(Note there are only two lines after "[Operating Systems]". the first starts with "multi" and the second starts with "C:\Microsoft". The wrapping in this edit box looks odd as I write this and I want to make sure the file contents are clear.)

Interestingly, the added lines don't look like anything I've seen on MSDN. But hey, it works.

If you change your boot.ini file as shown above, it may not be necessary to reinstal Win98.

Good luck.

My HAL.dll problem occurred after doing a BIOS upgrade on an Abit KT7A-RAID. I found this website:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prmd_stp_fwal.asp

Does this mean I need to re-install XP? Or can I change the BIOS settings back to what they were? What is ACPI??!

i upgrade from Me to XP Prof. and after install I get that hal.dll error missing or bad. Please help, in how to correct this problem, I can't edit the boot.ini and have a nonworking pc.

Many thanks

I downloaded the hal.dll file from a site found doing a search on google.com copied it to the windows\system32 folder. Worked fine after that GOOD LUCk

I have also had problems with hal.dll, how do you edit boot.ini though(Where is it located?)

I'm getting the same hal.dll problem. Is this a real bug in XP or have I done something wrong? I'd like to find a copy of hal.dll and try replacing it, as has been suggested. Can anyone tell me where to find it?

Reference Response number 12. Please give us the www where you found the hal.dll fix, and also would appreciate a personal email with the www fix [in case I miss it in this general response place]. I have been trying to fix this problem for a couple days and am having no luck to speak of. Thanks, Mike Clark c2188@aol.com

I found it...
http://dll.yaroslavl.ru/index.php3?in_char=H

There are two HAL.dll files here.. I chose the biggest one. Will check back to see if it worked.

I have a nonworking pc. This "Hal Dll"
file has me down to no boot=nothing.
I have a copy of this dll on disk but I
cant do anything with it. Doing a clean
install fr Me to XP.
Its my wifes PC....%#%%^%&% *H E L P*

Having a similiar experience. I have RC2 and has been working fine for 2 months, lots of apps, anti-virus, games all run fine.

I installed Global DIVx 4 and WINDVD2000, watched about 20 minutes on a DVD, then tried to exit the DVD player. The prog hung the system and I had to power off.(bad I know)

Upon reboot(i have dual boot ME/XP), i select XP and came up with "missing or corrupt HAL.DLL"

I found the "corrupted HAL" and it is smaller (77KB) than one on another XP box I have and the "pure" file on the XP CD both(101KB).
I have tried them both with no success.

My boot.ini appears to in order.

Any suggestions?

I was having the same problem as everyone else - here is the solution that worked for me.

I was trying to load XP on my server which already has 2000 Advanced Server, Win 98, and NT installed (very microsoft centered, as you can see :-P). I had a drive completely set aside for it - which I'd formatted from win2k as NTFS. I did exactly what everyone here attempted to do, and came up with the same results. Error w/ Hal.dll. Here's the solution : Make sure you can boot your machine from a cd, put in the XP cd, and start the computer. When you get into XP's setup - you will have to destroy the partition you want to set XP up on (if it's already created). The reason being is that Win2k uses NTFS 5.1 and Windows XP uses NTFS 5.0. Format the partition you want XP on using XP's formatting options for NTFS (you'll want this over FAT anyway - unless you're running 98 and want to see the drive/files when you've booted into windows 98). If you don't want to use NTFS - I'm not sure if this will work...

Hal.dll is the hardware abstraction layer used by the OS. The reason it fails is due to the way it interacts with the file system (if you'd like for me to be more specific w/ any of this, please, feel free to contact me)

Anyway, hope it works for you - it fixed my problem.

I was having the same problem as everyone else - here is the solution that worked for me.

1. Used FDISK to check partition number for Windows XP. Remember 1-C, 2-D, 3-e,...etc.
2. Change BOOT.INI with correct partition de Windows XP installation. (In my case partition number 4). Follow example of my BOOT.INI

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

4. Save your BOOT.INI file.
5. Done.

Good Luck.

I was having a similar but not exact problem. My single harddisk is a brand new one that I just bought. XP Pro CD automatically booted up the system and I formatted the HD with XP NTFS (version 5.0 i guess). But after the first restart, it said hal.dll was missing or corrupt. I never ran any other OS on the brand new harddrive previously. Why was I getting this error message? Also then I booted up the system using W98 startdisk and reformatted the HD with FAT. I setup XP again, I still got this error. Then I booted to W98 startdisk again and tried to set up XP thru D:\I386\winnt.exe But this time harddrive can't be detected. I got back out of XP setup and booted to W98 startdisk again, HD was successfully found. Then I restarted and ran a system disgnostic, harddrive is detected.
Then I booted up to DOS again and tried to gain access to \system32 but was denied access.

anyone, any help? I really gratefully appreciate.

also where is BOOT.INI located? thanks a lot

I am having the same problem as everyone else. I installed WinXP and am getting the hal.dll missing or corrupt error message. How do i get to my boot.ini file to fix it?

I have the same problem of hal.dll, and now i am trying to find any solution. Hope well........

I have suffered through this problem the past couple of days. Here is what I have, and what corrected the problem.

Original:
Dual Boot (ME, Windows2000 Server Pro)

Wanted:
Dual Boot (ME, delete Server Pro replace with XP Pro)

Since you cannot upgrade from Server Pro, I tried to install (clean) from Windows Me, and had the HAL.DLL errors whenever XP Pro was half way through the install process (after boot).

What fixed it:
Deleted my NTFS (PRO) partition, and formatted it as FAT32. What I *think* is happening (complete guess here), is that the ME partition, is unable to read the NTFS partition, and cannot boot to it. Changing my target install file type to FAT32 corrected it.

Hope this helps someone. This worked for me.

Joe

Hi!
After first installing XP and then Linux the XP-entry was missing. OK, I run fixboot from recovery console, Linux went missing and XP complained about hal.dll. Tried with a the "Internet"-hal.dll mentioned in a link in an earlier message here, tried with the original, nope nothing work, same error. Then I read about boot.ini in this forum and there the fault where, wrong partion for XP.
Used bootcfg /rebuild from the recovery and then it worked.
But my Linux is still gone, a problem for later...
Bye

HeDish

Hi!

I installed XP on my second drive and when I tried to boot win2k from the first, I had this hal.dll message. The simple solution: I changed the partition number for win2k from (2) to (1) in boot.ini.
I hope it works for others as well.

Amoeba

k...

for everyone who doesn't know where the boot.ini is : go to the boot (c:) drive, there the file is (invisible) . Just type "edit boot.ini" (I assume you booted with a bootdisk which contains edit or something similar) .

I have also a problem with the not found hal.dll .
My PX worked fine , tried to upgrade the bios of my Motherboard , which I eventually didn't because the bios was up-to-date. After rebooting everything went to hell ....first he said my HD was broken (which was a complete and utter lie) , then after another reboot he complained he couldn't find my hal.dll , so I asked a frined of my to send me a correc t version of his hal.dll , replaced mine , still doesn't work . There is nothing wrong with my boot.ini and I don't have dual-boot. ... .... HELP ?

I have just bought a new Dell 4300 with XP pre installed.
After 2 weeks use I also got the hal.dll problem. I'm not using any other OS and have not loaded anything else onto the system. Re loaded XP which fixed the problem, however didn't realsise it would wipe all my documents! Then ran Norton scan disk and the same problem happened but different file this time.
It now says there is a ntldr type file missing or corrupt.
I have given the PC back to the supplier for them to fix but having read previous messages realise it is probably an XP issue.
Not Good!

Here is the solution that worked for me:
When I booted from the CD to install XP, XP copied files to the hard disk. When XP rebooted, it booted from the CD again, since I set the CD as the primary boot device in the BIOS. I got the HAL32.DLL missing error in the windows\system folder.

Solution: the first time XP reboots your machine, intervene (hit DEL) and change the boot order in your BIOS -- set the hard disk, not the CD as the primary boot device. Save and exit, and reboot. No hal32.dll error. Windows XP will continue to install fine.