Firstly, I ran chkdsk. No problems whatsoever.. However, strangely, it took almost 2 hours to run the scan, and yet my operating HDD is only 320 GB.
For whatever reason, I don't have the standard Repair Install option in the XP CD.. Only the repair console, and the option of either formatting and re-installing, or installing a parallel Windows folder on the same partition.
I installed the second copy of Windows on the drive, and overwrote the old hal.dll with the new one.
I've heard the hal.dll error is caused by one of two things, one being hal.dll being corrupt of missing, the other being a problematic boot.ini, so, for good measure, I created a new boot.ini, yet I'm still have the hal.dll error.
If I try to log onto the new copy of Windows on the same drive, I get in fine.
Any suggestions?
And secondly, is it possible to get to the recovery installer if it's not displayed by default?
Edit:
After doing the parallel installation and grabbing the apparently corrupt hal.dll, and fixing the boot.ini, I left a back-up copy of the original Windows folder in C:\ under the name of Windows1 (As the parallel install had been Windows0.)
However, when I went to double-check the boot.ini through the recovery console, the only Windows installation it reported on that drive was the parallel install, stuffed away in the recycle bin.
Edit 2: Taking the parallel copy out of the recycle bin, and booting to it, I was then able to start an XP re-install on the drive and successfully get to the repair screen.. But only the parallel copy was displayed.
Is it possible to force the installer to recognize the other installation?
Edited by Deiz, 29 June 2007 - 02:21 PM.
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