Hi all, Well something very weird happened to my computer 2 days ago, and I was trying to solve it until now!!! Well, what happened is that during the work on the computer, outlook started to act weird, so I thought I should restart computer. When I restarted, it didn’t go to windows, instead, it popped the message that HAL.DLL is missing. It was all of a sudden. I didn’t install anything for 2 months. Ok, now comes the weirdest part of all. When I went into C: drive to list the folders, and see whets the trouble there, it gave me permission, and I saw the contents of root, with folder structure. But, when I tried to go any deeper, I got message that access is denied?! Every file or folder in the root was unreadable. The interesting thing is that the 2 partitions with data are ok and working great. When I put BARTpe into action, I could browse the rest of the partitions except the windows one. I thought the problem is with MBR, so I did everything to recover that. Used Recovery console, bunch of programs, but to no avail! Nothing worked, I got the same messages all over again. I tried Partition Disk Doctor, Active image disk, etc. Another very interesting thing also is, when I open C: volume with some of these recover programs, and try to browse folders (since some of them have that option), EVERTYTHING SEEMS FINE!!! I can get into all folders, and everything works without glitches. So, I still believe there's a hope, cause I saw the data there, I just can’t retrieve it for some reason. After 2 days of work (some of the data is very important there), I found myself using R-drive image tool, to backup whole partition as a image file, and try to restore it. The program didn’t show me any errors with the partition, even though I checked 5 times. Couldn’t believe, that for these programs everything seems normal. I did the backup, passed it on to another computer, and tried to restore it on a new computer, thinking it’s all over, and I have the data. :( But..... hm...... It didn’t work again for some reason. The backup went fine, no errors nothing. I have a backup of 20 gb on my other computer in image file, and when I try to restore it with the same program used for backing up, I get the structure of the root, and that’s it!! I can’t get any deeper. And that’s after 4 hours waiting for backup of the partition. If you read till here, thanks allot, I appreciate it. Maybe you will be able to help me out with a suggestion, because I'm getting out of all options. Part of the reason why I was so long on this, is that it’s so weird, and I wanted to figure it out. Now I need help, since it seems like mission impossible. I hope the data in not lost forever?? There must be some solution, since with recovery programs, I can get past root folder structure. There must be more to it..... Thanks allot for your answers, I will check in back soon, and report the proceedings. Cheers, D.

This may help: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm jablonskia@gmail.com

This, too: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=hal.dll+missing jablonskia@gmail.com

I suspect all that is all too late. Why would you think backing up/imaging a corrupt disk and restoring that image would solve any issue? Corrupt=corrupt What does hal.dll have anything to do with installing apps? Installing apps doesn't change the hardware abstraction layer dll which is created/modified with hardware installs. MBR=master boot record. You were past that when you go the hal.dll missing error. You can have file errors with no errors concerning partitions. Two different animals. Sounds like a simple chkdsk /f at recovery console would have fixed your issue to me. Not knowing what you have done to the disk or file structure at this point my advice is use one of the recovery programs to backup your important data. Next step would be a repair install. Google for the step by step. This will restore the OS to install pristine with all your apps/data intact [if you have not corrupted them already]. You will then need to redo all of the OS updates. Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.