A guy at work got a virus the other day antivirus quarantined it but that didnt help, and this thing wiped his computer out.

Its a HP compaq nx9010 it goes to the spalsh screen of hp then just sits at a black screen for a while,

then this message comes up

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

There are some important files on the computer that are very important.

It wont let me repair xp and I just get errors when I try bootcfg /list
no boot entries to display

bootcfg /rebuild
error failed to successfully scan disks for windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system

chkdsk
The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.

Any help is appreciated, there are important files that are needed on this hd, is it toast?

Thanks for the help.

As to the error here are some browsing materials:

http://www.google.com/search?q=hal.dll%20missing

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups...r=&sa=N&tab=wg

As to the data: in a worse case scenerio you can slave the drive on another computer to access data.

If you know the hard drive make you can run their diagnostic:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

No luck with this thing yet

What have you tried?

I think that question should be what havent I tried, I have really given up on it, I think the drive is dead, I have tried the recovery disk a few other utilities barts minipe wouldnt even recognize the drive. I dont know what else is left to try, tried to reinstall windows and says I need to reformat cuz the partition was either full or damaged. Didnt want to reformat it because I didnt want to lose the info that was on the drive. I dont know is there anything else that I could possibly try?

Thanks for the help its appreciated.

Did you try the hard drive manufacturers diagnostic?

As mentioned you can slave the drive to extract data.

Yeah, I will need to get an adapter, its a laptop hd and I only have a desktop at home. I tried the hp recovery disc with no luck

Adapter info:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5160538.html#

What is the make of the hard drive?

Have you tried their diagnostic?