hal.dll error on boot up

[gazozborne]

"reboot and select proper boot device"

Hi There,

So i finally decided to defragment my hard drive today while i went to work only to come back to a black screen saying;

"Reboot and select the proper boot device. Or insert boot
media in selected boot device and press a key"

Thought id restart it and use the repair console which didnt work however when i rebooted to hard drive i get the following;

"Windows cannot start because of the following file is either missing or corrupt:<windows root>/system 32\hal.dll"

It wont pick up any CD's i put in and no matter how many times i restart it just says the same thing, i've got a lot of valuable stuff on there i really dont want to lose if possible. Only solution i can think of so far is buying a cheap HD drive>installing XP>recovering info>formatting but wondering if anyone has anymore ideas i can try?

Thanks

 

[gazozborne]

Yeah i've tried googling it, spent ages on it and most suggestions come out with repair console or formatting...i cant do either though as it wont detect any CDs :\

My 2nd drive also has stuff i cant really afford to lose on it (paid for mp3s i didnt back up yet mostly) so i dont want to format either! Also been looking at external HD's so i dont need to back everything up to DVD's - do they allow you to install XP at all?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-040-LC

is the one i was looking at, either going to find a 20gb or get a really cheap 80gb...or fork out extra for a portable external drive with XP on for times like this.

 

[gazozborne]

right, update - i've borrowed a friends hard drive and put that in...with the buggered drive as slave...however when i tell it to start up from the XP Cd it says "please insert boot media" and when it goes to the hard drive it gives me the safe mode screen then just resets itself :-\

i've disabled the second drive in bios and made the new hd master but i still never get any XP repair console as it doesnt try to read the CD drives.

anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

[gazozborne]

nobody?

tis driving me crazy as it wont read XP CD in any drive and changing hard drive makes no difference to the error messages. end of tether!

 

[gazozborne]

So it won't boot from the cd with even no hard drives connected?

nah i get nothing, unplugged ide cables etc and it still says to insert proper boot disc :-\

also topic titles a bit misread now sorry, hal.dll problem has gone away now - i just get this proper boot disc error everytime instead.