missing or corrupt Hal.dll - invalid boot.ini

Help!

Anyone know what is up with this?

I just reinstalled windows XP media center on my notebook computer a couple days ago. Last night I was updating to SP3 after it installed the computer restarted and never turned on again. It said "invalid boot.ini
booting from c:/windows"

the next screen read:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system\hal.dll

Please reinstall a copy of the file above"


So I scoured the Internet a bit on my mobile phone and not many people seem to have overcome this. I tried the recovery console but it would not let me Copy/expand the Hal.dll file. "Could not expand file".

What to do? If I reinstall will the problem come back? Does this have something to do with my 2 external USB drives? I noticed that the drive letters were flipped around a bit in the recovery console. Could it be because I was installing IE8 at the same time as SP3?

Reading online it sounds like some people are having this problem but they can still get into windows and edit files??? How? I can't even go into safe mode. Also I'm on a laptop, so no floppy drive or access to switching drives around.

So right now I am reinstalling xp media center and sp3 with both of my external drives unplugged. I hope thus will help. Can anyone give me any insight into this and maybe tell me how tobavoid it from happening again?


Thanks!

hal.dll

The over / re-install is about the only way to fix that. Usually that problem is casued by bad/wrong drivers. :(

If you mean you started and was running both installs at the same time, DON'T!

Intall OS
Install service pack 3
Install mobo drivers.
Update/install video card drivers if needed.
Install Antivirus
Makes sure Firewall is running / install 3rd party firewall and it is working.
Be sure to reboot between each install or you will be starting over again!
Now you are ready for windows updates.

If anything happens that changes the number of the partition that XP is on, such as adding/subtracting a partition, (that would make the "boot.ini" point to the incorrect partition) then you'll get that "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error message.

I just boot to a live USB of Linux and look at the partitions in GPartEd, then adjust the boot.ini file to reflect the correct partition number.

The reason my machine is subject to this problem is XP is on the last partition on the disk, meaning anything I do to add/subtract the other partitions results in an error in the "boot.ini" file.