provobis

Zazula, thanks for your comeback. However, as good as your advice surely is for the error message "Windows could not start because the hal.dll file is missing or corrupt" (when that message appears during the boot attempt), I should tell you the missing hal.dll message does NOT appear during my boot. I only saw it when trying to use various software utilities to try to fix the problem I have. I suspect the message is corrupted software and therefore false. And...I have tried your advice several times before, as it is posted on several other message boards.

However I tried it once more for good measure after your response here, and what happens is this:
After your step #9, the computer restarts as you say, but no updated boot list appears, nor any message to "please select the operating system to start". Instead, a repeat chkdsk screen appears which always says that a chkdsk has been scheduled, and of course the long chkdsk process repeats. So I suppose it's correct to assume that somwhere there is an eternally embeded chkdsk entry that never gets deleted. Consequently the repeating chkdsk process no matter what I use to try to reboot (or fix) the OS. If this is the case I would think (at least part of) the solution is to delete that chkdsk entry, wherever it is. However, if I can do that I would not want to permanently disable the chkdsk utility of course, in case I want to use it in normal circumstances.