[tediisbare1]

I know these replies have been few and far between, it's been a very busy week and I have to beg my son to use his laptop. I ran the diagnostic and my hard drive seems to be fine and in good working order. So now what? T

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Try Windows repair: http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

[Broni]

Try Windows repair: http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

[tediisbare1]

I don't have Windows XP Prof. Only XP Home. I have tried to build a new XPSETUP disk at work. Unfortunately I don't have a dvd drive on my PC at work so I can't complete the project because the setup is too large to build in cd mode. Sooo, no XP Prof, no dvd burner to burn a new disk. I'm starting to feel as if I'm banging my head against a wall!

[Broni]

You can borrow XP Pro CD to perform repair. Service Pack on CD must match service pack installed on your computer, though.
Do you have any important data on your computer?
Maybe, recovery partition can be used.
What brand of computer is it?

[tediisbare1]

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8600

[Broni]

Do you have any important data on your computer?

[tediisbare1]

Pictures and passwords that I stupidly hadn't sent to me email account yet.

[Broni]

You can buy USB hard drive enclosure (laptop drive type), hook it up to another computer and save your data.

[tediisbare1]

I hate to sound stupid, but why stop now...how am I to save my data if I can't get on the laptop?

[Broni]

What do you mean by "why stop now"?

how am I to save my data if I can't get on the laptop?

You buy USB hard drive enclosure.
You remove hard drive from your laptop.
You put it into enclosure.
You hook up the enclosure to another working computer and you save your data.

[tediisbare1]

I wanted to give you an update regarding my laptop HDD problem. I did buy an enclosure as you suggested. I moved my files from my laptop to my son's and then sat back for a few days trying to figure out what to do next. While contemplating, I read an article where it was suggested that if you "knock" the HDD sometimes the electricity built up in it will be released and you can perform setup/recovery from your disk and all will be well. Since I was dead in the water anyway I figured I would give that a try AND when putting my HDD into my enclosure it had been knocked around a little bit in the metal case...I figured nothing could hurt at this point. So, I put the HDD back into my laptop and tried to boot from my Startup disk. To my amazement the Startup disk actually booted the whole thing! I ran a re-install and everything is working well...At least for the last 24 hours. I wanted to thank you for all of your recommendations and patience with me during this whole process. Teddi

[The Skeptic]

I hope the problem is solved. In case it didn't, there are two options that I would consider:

1: The hard disk is defective.

2: Quote from here: "Note: If repairing the boot.ini does correct the hal.dll issue but the problem reappears after a reboot and you've recently installed Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP, uninstall IE8. In this specific situation, IE8 could be the root cause of your hal.dll problem".