Virtual DR file missing

[jenniwithag]

Last night when my husband tried to restart our computer, a black screen popped up and in white letters read system 32\hal.dll file missing. We were unable to get past that screen at all. Luckily, we have an old back up computer and was able to use that to make a start up disk using a 3.5 floppy disk. When we put the disk in the new computer it took us past the screen 32\hal.dll file missing and is now saying Virtual DR file missing press any key. I started with the Enter button and when that failed, I liteally tried every key on my keyboard, we just keep getting the same message over and over virutal DR file mssing, press any key. We are extremely confused and in desperate need of help!!!!

[SuperSparks]

That missing HAL.dll message is often caused by the Boot.ini file pointing to the wrong drive or partition. Boot up with the WinXP CD in the drive, and go to the Recovery Console. At the command prompt, type "Fixboot", then "Bootcfg /rebuild" without the quotes.

[jenniwithag]

That missing HAL.dll message is often caused by the Boot.ini file pointing to the wrong drive or partition. Boot up with the WinXP CD in the drive, and go to the Recovery Console. At the command prompt, type "Fixboot", then "Bootcfg /rebuild" without the quotes.

We tried to put the WinXP CD in the drive, its not giving a command prompt at all. Any ideas what we should we should do next? Thank you so much for your help. Your a godsend!

[Broni]

If you have Windows CD...(if you don't have Windows CD, scroll down)

1. Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD and assure that your CD-ROM drive is capable of booting the CD.
2. Once you have booted from CD, do NOT select the option that states: Press F2 to initiate the Automated System Recovery (ASR) tool.
You’re going to proceed until you see the following screen, at which point you will press the “R” key to enter the recovery console:



3. After you have selected the appropriate option from step two, you will be prompted to select a valid Windows installation (typically number “1″).
Select the installation number, and hit Enter.
If there is an administrator password for the administrator account, enter it and hit Enter (if asked for the password, and you don't know it, you're out of luck).
You will be greeted with this screen, which indicates a recovery console at the ready:



4. There are eight commands you must enter in sequence to repair your problem..
I will introduce them here, and then show the results graphically in the next six steps.
NOTE. Make sure, you press Enter after each command. Make sure, all commands are exact, including "spaces".
These commands are as follows:

CD..
ATTRIB -H C:\\boot.ini
ATTRIB -S C:\\boot.ini
ATTRIB -R C:\\boot.ini
del boot.ini
BOOTCFG /Rebuild

Note about the above command.
BOOTCFG /REBUILD command which searches for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a litany of common Windows errors.
It is very important that you do one or both of the following two things:
A.) Every Windows XP owner must use /FASTDETECT as OS Load Option when the rebuild process is finalizing.
B.) If you are the owner of a CPU featuring Intel’s XD or AMD’s NX buffer overflow protection, you must also use /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN as an OS Load Option.
For the Enter Load Identifier portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system you have installed.
If, for example, you are using Windows XP Home, you could type Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for the identifier (it's not crucial, however what the name is, as long, as it's meaningful).
Here is your computer screen:



5. Following command verifies the integrity of the hard drive containing the Windows XP installation. While this step is not an essential function in our process, it’s still good to be sure that the drive is physically capable of running windows, in that it contains no bad sectors or other corruptions that might be the culprit:

CHKDSK /R

6. This last command writes a new boot sector to the hard drive and cleans up all the loose ends we created by rebuilding the BOOT.INI file and the system files. When the Windows Recovery Console asks you if you are Sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ? just hit “Y”, then Enter to confirm your decision:

FIXBOOT

7. It’s time to reboot your PC by typing
EXIT
and pressing Enter.

With any luck, your PC will boot successfully into Windows XP as if your various DLL, Hive, EXE and NTLDR errors never existed.



If you don't have Windows CD...
Download Windows Recovery Console: http://www.thecomputerparamedic.com/files/rc.iso
Download, and install free Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
Using Imgburn, burn rc.iso to a CD.
Boot to the CD...let it finish loading.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Then, follow instructions from Step #3 above.

[Welshjim]

jenniwithag--If you can boot into SafeMode, you could try running a System Restore to a time before the problem started.