[tamdoll]

Woke up this morning to a black screen on my desktop and message:
File is missing or corrupt. Windows root/system32/hal.dll

Machine has no working disk drive, just usb.

As in a previous topic, I downloaded ARCDC from Artellos.com to attempt fix --burned a disk on my laptop then dragged all the contents onto a flash drive. Should this have worked?

Inserting the flash drive into the computer and booting from there has just given me a black screen with blinking cursor - typing has no effect, hitting R then <enter> does nothing.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tammy

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Hello tamdoll.... Welcome to
GeeksToGo,


I'm sorry to hear about your issue. We will try to help you resolve this as soon as possible.

• Please understand we are all volunteers and we are not here all the time.
• Sometimes it may be a extended amount of time to get back to you. If it has been
  more then 3 days please shoot me a PM and I will try to get back to you quickly
  then.
• Please do the following and supply the requested information as needed. If you
  don't understand my instructions please ask and I will try to explain them
  clearer for you.
• Do not attempt any steps unless instructed or ask before to
  make sure they will not cause any further issues.
• If you are receiving assistance in any other forum site please let us know as there may be conflicting advice given.

Before we can help you need to provide the following so I can start you in the right direction.
Laptop or Desktop?

• If a name brand system then what brand, make and model is the system?
• If custom built then what brand, make and model is the motherboard
• Total memory installed
• Total hard drive capacity and free space
• What steps have you taken so far to resolve the issue

[rshaffer61]

Hello tamdoll.... Welcome to
GeeksToGo,


I'm sorry to hear about your issue. We will try to help you resolve this as soon as possible.

• Please understand we are all volunteers and we are not here all the time.
• Sometimes it may be a extended amount of time to get back to you. If it has been
  more then 3 days please shoot me a PM and I will try to get back to you quickly
  then.
• Please do the following and supply the requested information as needed. If you
  don't understand my instructions please ask and I will try to explain them
  clearer for you.
• Do not attempt any steps unless instructed or ask before to
  make sure they will not cause any further issues.
• If you are receiving assistance in any other forum site please let us know as there may be conflicting advice given.

Before we can help you need to provide the following so I can start you in the right direction.
Laptop or Desktop?

• If a name brand system then what brand, make and model is the system?
• If custom built then what brand, make and model is the motherboard
• Total memory installed
• Total hard drive capacity and free space
• What steps have you taken so far to resolve the issue

[Macboatmaster]

It is possible to put the Recovery Consle on a USB drive, but it requires you to have the Windows CD
That download from one of our staff members Artellos will not work by simply transferring the files to a USB

Additionally of course your computer has to be capable of booting from a USB drive and if the computer is old it is unlikely to offer that facility
That can be checked in BIOS which is normally accessed by either F2 or delete on first post screen, it may well tell you on the post screen
To enter setup press ?
There you need to check if the USB is offered as a boot option.

It would be far easier to connect an external optical drive

Have you tried F8 key and Safe Mode AND LAST KNOWN GOOD

It is unlikely it will work but worth a try.

What is the make and full model of the computer please if branded.


MY POST was being typed, before my colleagues appeared.
Please continue with the excellent advice you will receive from rshaffer61

[tamdoll]

I can boot from USB drive.
Tried F8, Safe Mode & Last Known Good.
Don't have any CDs from previous installation.

Desktop
Dell Dimension E510
1 GB memory installed (seen at F2)
I'm pretty sure the hard drive capacity was 160G, don't know the free space

Have tried launching in SAFE Mode, no effect.

Thanks again for looking at this.

[rshaffer61]

The only way to completely fix a Hal issue is to do a repair installation but this would require you borrow a installation disk of the same type that is installed on your system. In your case that would be XP but it has to be the Home, Media or Pro version also.
From there we can post the instructions on how to do the Repair installation which will save your programs and data. The updates would all have to be done along with the drivers being updated again but your system will return to booting normal then.

[Macboatmaster]

Further to what my colleague has said, that Dell E150 did of course have a DVD/CD drive, so one option is to put another DVD drive in or connect an external.

However as we have said, you really need the XP CD or the Dell reinstallation disc.

You can as rshaffer61 has said borrow an XP CD of the same edition as the O/S

OR if you have a DVD drive we can try the downloaded recovery console. The reason for the difference is that the downloaded console is ONLY the console and therefore we cannot copy files from the CD to the hard drive using the console only

Neither as explained can a repair installation be done.

Here is the link to the E510 user manual

https://docs.google....qmID6mrwS6Tqxtw

page 85 deals with removing hard drive

If you do that and connect it to another computer in an enclosure or docking station, then you may
1. Obtain your data - ie your doc s, images etc. so that those are secure
Providing the drive is OK and it is only hal.dll , that frequently is bootcfg file is wrong and hal.dll is not really missing or corrupt

then with the drive connected to another computer you can access your data.

If you connect it to a windows computer running XP (Preferably) and run chkdsk on it, you may JUST strike lucky.

[tamdoll]

Thank you all for your help. For now I'm going to say this is "Resolved" since I'm not going to pursue fixing the hal.dll error.

For now, I'm going to remove the hard drive, thank you for the link to user manual - I will have to refer to that, and put it in a docking station so I can retrieve all my data with my new computer.

Thanks again,
Tammy