[Svenska]

Hello all. I’m new to this forum ‘cause I have a problem (what else is new?)

My Dell E510, new in April this year, had been running 24/7 and doing reasonably well on XP-Media Center Ed 2005 – not my choice, but with the options I wanted, that was Dell’s only offer. Weekly I shut down the entire system and do a cold reboot. Never a problem until late yesterday when I got the following message: "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the above file”.

How do I do that when the PC is dead???

I’ve been “reading the mail” and have seen several *.dll problems but, naturally, not like mine. If you didn’t know, Dell no longer sends out CDs of ANYTHING. I have no XP-Media Center discs, discs for programs preloaded by Dell, and NO RECOVERY DISC. Noda, zip, zilch.

Yeah, yeah, I shoulda made my own recovery disc… Well, I didn’t and it’s too late for that now.

Good news (I think) is that I have access to a second PC by which I’m on line with you now. Finding a copy of System32\hal.dll via the Internet should not be a problem. Problem is how do I boot up what is now a dead terminal without a Recovery Disc or some other form of OS?

I have looked at the menu’s for F8 and F12 but I’m years and years behind the power curve so a lot of it is technobable. Until I retired a couple of years back, I had my IT staff to bail me out when PCs, servers or systems failed so I’m only marginally computer literate any more.

Tak så mycket!

Svenska

 

[Kalim]

Try here for recovery disks: http://www.gennersales.co.uk/recovery/dell.htm

I don't know how it works at present with DELL as I haven;t had a system off them to reinstall on. Generally, you need the XP CD to do this: http://www.compphix.com/corrupthal.html

 

[Dragonblade]

Generally, Dell PC's that come without recovery disks have a hidden Recovery partition on the hard drive. If you can see a blue line appear at the top of the screen after you power on the PC that has "Dell Incorporated" or something like that, you need to press Ctrl+F11 & that will launch the recovery program. I can't remember if there is an option for a non-destructive recovery. If not you will lose all your data unless you connect your hard drive to another PC as a secondary drive & backup all your personal folders.

 

[Svenska]

Thanks for the info re the XP CD. I have two CD's for XP - both are Home Edition. One was an upgrade from W98 to XP used on an old PC I no longer have. The second is for my older Dell machine. As both are Home Edition I'm reluctant to experiment on the dead one set up for XP Multi-media. Worth considering, anyway.

 

[Svenska]

Dragonblade - Thanks for the Ctrl-F11 tip. It brings up a commercial recovery to reset the entire system to factory settings BUT as you suggested might happen, all data is deleted in the process.

This will take some thought.

 

[Girderman]

I've tried to use a "real" XP disk to do a repair install on a Dell machine and couldn't get it to go. The PC's owner eventually found her Dell disk, so I never explored it fully, but I left off at the point of finding another Dell disk of the same version (SP1, in this case), I can't say if they are interchangeable.

But that's a good question, I think.

 

[Kalim]

Don't try regular XP CD's they won't work and are not supported by MS in that. Slave your HDD onto another PC and get all your data transferred across that way first. I think then you will need a clean install unless you buy one of those recovery disks I linked to or find someone lending you a DELL model and OS specific disk.

 

[Girderman]

Don't try regular XP CD's they won't work and are not supported by MS in that. Slave your HDD onto another PC and get all your data transferred across that way first. I think then you will need a clean install unless you buy one of those recovery disks I linked to or find someone lending you a DELL model and OS specific disk.

As I recall, this is exactly what I had to do. (It was last year.

The reason is the customer didn't come up with her Dell XP disk until AFTER I tried to run the Reinstall with the "real" XP disk.

Which is to say that I completely bunged the Dell installation up with the "real" XP disk. So don't even try it.

The real question I have is if (and/or how) the Dell disks are interchangeable.

 

[Svenska]

Reinstalling System32\hal.dll on Dead PC

In my situation, the problem has been resolved by

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

Problem was in the BOOT.INI being misconfigured. The above link takes you step by step through the process.

By the way, I was able to use the XP Software disc received from Dell with my older PC. New ones for this PC are on order.

Thanks to all.

 

[Kalim]

Thats what I linked to earlier which was only runnable having an XP CD

Thanks for letting us know and glad you got is sorted. :grin:

 

[Svenska]

Thats what I linked to earlier which was only runnable having an XP CD

Thanks for letting us know and glad you got is sorted. :grin:

EXACTLY! My apologies for not giving Kalim credit for providing the link. I received so many suggestions from this board, friends and my local PC repair shop I lost track of where the suggestion came from. You are much appreciated!:smile:

 

[Kalim]

Its all good Svenska :grin: You're very welcome.