First time for posting here, so I hope I do this right. Two weeks ago, all on the same day, I installed and ran AVG's free virus checker, ran an MS update and also ran Ad-Aware. The next morning I booted up fine and used Outlook Express. After about 2 hours, while the computer was just sitting there, it rebooted itself, and landed on the black screen for me to choose my operating system. I only have one, xp, so I don't usually see that 'safe mode' screen, but it was offering up my old Win ME, for which old files were saved to my second hard Drive D. When I make a boot disk (boot.ini, ntldr, & ntdetect.com) off my friend's computer with the same configuration of hard drives and OS, the startup screen gives me the xp choice, but then it tells me my hal.dll is missing or corrupted. So, I copy his hal.dll to mine, but still no go. I was convinced this would solve the problem as my hal was 99 kb and everyone elses' was 129. I got MS's 6-disk set of bootable floppies in order to use the Recovery console, but it ONLY points to D:\WINDOWS, and mine is on C. I wanted to use the Recovery Console to try to repair my boot sector, cause I think the problem must be there. If I copy those same three boot files from my friend's computer and put them on my C root, I don't get the same result. With the disks, it boots to xp and fails when Hal isn't acceptable. When I boot from my C drive, it looks to Win ME. My config.sys and autoexec.bat files were not empty as everyone else's seemed to be, and I got encouraged when the autoexec.bat contained a line pointing to C:\windows\ifshlp.sys, which is the original error file when the boot points to Win ME. But, editing out all the info in that file didn't work, either. So, my last idea, after reading through some boot posts here, was to fix the boot sector on my C drive. But, of course, Recovery Console only points to my D Drive. I have even tried disabling the D drive in my Bios, but the boot process still points it to the old Win ME files stored there. I even renamed the Windows folder on the D drive, and that doesn't work, either. : ( The only way I've even been able to function on my computer is by booting with an old Win98 floppy that installs a little mini RamDrive with lots more DOS commands. Any clues here? I've been frustrated with this for two weeks now. I've learned a lot, but was hoping to have my computer back by now. I guess I can use the Setup/Repair feature rather than the Recovery Console, but I absolutely do not want to lose my .dbx files for Outlook Express or my massive Favorites files. Something fjb said makes me think I'm ok, but I'm just chicken. Don't feel like rebuilding the whole engine when I *think* I just have a starter problem.....g I might add, my C Drive is super low on available space. Could that have caused this problem, or do I need to worry about AVG or Microsoft's updates? Thanks! chris "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" Einstein

you might boot to a win me or 98 floppy and type format /D: getting rid of windows ME would solve alot of problems.

No, I don't even want to format my Drive D. It has all my data on it! Should I just delete all the windows me files on Drive D. How come renaming the folder did do it? "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" Einstein

Something does seem strange. The XP RC I do not think will list ME as a OS, would suspect that XP is indeed on drive D:. Go into bios and post where each hdd is connected (IDE chanel- Master/Slave) , next find the boot option and post what is the sequences. The most 2 reasons for hal.dll error is 1)it is indeed missing or courupt 2)the bootini file points to the wrong hdd or partition. post contents of bootini. "config.sys and autoexec.bat" should both be empty.

Here's another thought about free disk space after talking to a new source.... I only have 1.4 gig's free of 40 gigs on my C Drive. She seems to think that when I did my last MS update the day before it crashed, that it didn't have room on C, so it put the updates on the D Drive where it found those old Win ME files under D:\Windows. If this is true, why does disabling the D Drive NOT solve my problem? She seems to think I need to reformat my D Drive as does ccfrank above. Is there some sort of erroneous boot sector info now over there that needs to be reformatted over? Or, is there another way to fix that problem without reformatting? thx! chris "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources" Einstein

I would try completely removing the D Drive from your system (unplug power and cable). There could be some low level formatting issue or boot record issue that is still being seen on the D drive even though you have disabled it in the Bios. Also if you can confirm that the XP system is on the primary drive... and that you don't have a dual boot option in your boot.ini. Yours should look something similar to the following: [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn also if you have an entry for the ME system you can safely delete it and it should get rid of any dual-boot option just after post (be sure to back up the boot.ini first before editing in case there are any problems). Let me know what your results are after you unplug the d. If you for sure have the XP os on the C drive then you should be able to run some recovery options to recover your OS. Michael

Why put yourself thorugh all this...copy Favorites to a folder on D Drive and your My Documents as well. Move the OE store to D drive by going tools, options, maintenance and move store to D drive in a folder you name. then disconnect the D drive and "wipe and load Windows. With the two drives you have an ideal setup to do a clean install where you would have been back and fixed in 5-6 hours depending on what you had to install. Rich M www.kickenhardware.net