Hi all.
Mates laptop wouldn't turn on one day.. (thinks her kid's maybe done something..).

Turn it on - it asks for password - then waits a minute - then just a black screen:
'windows cannot start because a file is missing or corrupt..<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. '

I've had a look and I'm getting nowhere (although I'm no expert,far from it). Hopefully the drive isn't fried, as she'd like to get her files etc back.

I've put an XP Home cd in and set it to boot from cd,which it does,hoping to run a fresh copy (where you can save files etc). Setup inspects it and all looks fine,blue screens etc, then it can't seem to find something (the original OS?) It's 40gb and shows 38000etc on the blue screen. It wants to do a format to the NTFS (or ntldr?) system... I don't want to format at this stage, because of her files.
Had a go at Recovery console - although i'm a bit wary as it looks pretty techy to me! Anyway, pressed 'R'.......and it just takes me to a black screen with 2 lines stating I'm in recovery console..then just a c:\ prompt.
I've had a quick look how to use R Console here: Restore Hal.dll - How To Restore Hal.dll From the Windows XP CD - Hal.dll
which I'm not getting on this laptop...just a c: prompt. So I can't type in 'expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll' or anything really as far as I can see. When I type in 'dir' I get ....'an error occurred during directory enumeration'....hmm.
It sees D:\ - as in c:\ dir d: shows all the files on the xp home setup cd.

I can get into the start menu choice thing (f8). When I go for 'last known good confugeration' or safe mode it goes back to the original black screen with 'windows cannot start because a file is missing or corrupt..<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.

Any help muchly apreciated - Thanks, Dave.

The laptop is: Acer TravelMate 2413LM 40Gb looks quite old.

edit - Booted with the xp home cd again.Into setup - blue screen shows there's no partition...:

setup xp press enter - create partition press c - delete partition press d

38202 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
c: Partition1 [Unknown] 38194 MB < 38193 MB free>
Unpartitioned space 8 MB

Why's there no partition? Should I set one.......or will I lose all the data?
Sorry for banging on; just trying to give you guys any info I have.

It would appear that Setup cannot see any data on that drive.

You could try to run an Ubuntu Live CD just to see if it can see anything:

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

If that shows nothing you could try to remove this drive and connect it to a desktop in order to extract data.

Setup will partition and format but yes you will lose all previous data.

Thanks jephree.

Looks like a common problem - was trawling the 'net for hours last night and I'm going round in circles.
Many people have the missing hal.dll. file BUT, they can run a fresh install,(keeping the files),simple. I can't. My only option is a format.
AND, there's only a couple of people I've seen so far who have the same problem as me.....It MUST BE the partition??? It's unknown..not set active..how could this happen?!

Here's just some info I've gleaned where some people can work around it using commands like "press R to start the Recovery Console. now type expand j:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll"

DLL-files.com - hal.dll, free download

I can now get into recovery console and played around a bit,using the help command, which then lists all the commands available.
I tried Fixboot, it recognized there was a problem, said it fixed something, said "new boot sector was successfully written"..........rebooted.......same.lol.
Had a look at Fixmbr but it threw up a caution, "you have a non standard or invalid mbr..may damage partition tables".

But then it's not the boot sector etc is it..it's this darn 'missing'! partition..So I could go on forever trying to write to it...it can't be seen..something needs sorting about the unknown,inactive partition..hmmm.

Sure is a tricky little devil!
I might percivere a while longer, then see if she's bothered about her data,
then .................. Boom to the old OS, format the begger!

Oh, I'm not familiar with ubuntu etc and it's getting to the point where I might just nuke the drive haha.