Can't boot due to "/system32/hall.dll problem". Help needed.

[Trankuility]

Yesterday I tried installing some themes for XP including startup and login screens. According to the instructions, In order to get the startup screen to work I had to add a line in my boot.ini file. This would then give me two options when booting up my computer in a way that looked like dual OS's were installed.

I followed the directions and rebooted. On startup I was presented with two choices. 1- boot using Win XP or 2- boot using Win XP bootnos (I can't remember the exact word). I chose the second one because that was supposed to enable to the new startup screen. But when I chose the option I received the following error:

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

So I rebooted and tried to get into safe mode so I could change my boot file back to the way it was, as I supposed this must be the problem, but I couldn't. I still got the same error on startup. I then went down the list of available options i.e. Safe mode, Safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, boot with last known good config, start windows normally...every option that was available, I tried. Tried changing options in BIOS, still nothing. I then tried booting with my Win XP CD to do a clean install. It wouldn't let me do that either.

Here's exactly what happens....

Boot->
Soyo Mobo screen appears->
System scans devices->
System checks memory, bootable devices, etc.->
System asks which OS I want to boot with; Win XP or Win XPbootnos->
System32 Error appears on screen (happens when booting with either option)

At the error screen I can't enter any text to put in commands because when I press ANY key at all, the system automatically reboots. Even when trying to boot from the XP CD, I'm still taken to the error screen and can't go further because the system automatically reboots.

I've looked around the net and the answers always say to boot from you disk, reinstall windows, extract this or that, run this command at the prompt. But I can't do any of that due to my system automatically rebooting.

Perhaps there is a way to stop the system before getting to the screen and entering some commands but I don't know how to do that.

Would somebody please help? I'm stuck here. 🙁


Thanks!

 

[Lord Evermore]

What happened that you couldn't boot to your XP CD? Nothing on the hard drive should affect that. Just make sure that your BIOS is configured to try the CD first. You can also avoid doing a complete reinstall by choosing the "Repair" option when Setup locates your existing Windows installation. This will make the system almost the same as a clean install, but leave all your apps and files in place, and all their Registry entries and start menu items. You will have to download all the updates again though.

What did you use to replace the startup screen and set up the themes? I was under the impression that changing the XP startup screen required replacement of certain system files. If you know what files were replaced, you can extract them from the CD using the Recovery Console when you boot from the CD.

 

[Trankuility]

I tried setting CD ROM as the first bootable device in BIOS but it's like it just doesn't care what I want, heheh. 🙁 It still boots from the HD, therefore I get stuck in that loop of error message/reboot. I can't extract any files or use the repair option because I am unable to make it that far.

If editing system files other than the Boot file is necessary to make new start up screens, etc. I wouldn't know. I only made this far in the directions to change the screen. The next step...well I'll find that out once I get my computer to work and can look at the readme file again. For now, the only thing I changed was the boot.ini file. I also added a file in the System32 folder. If I could use the repair function to fix this, I would. But it's not letting me get that far. 🙁

Any other ideas?

 

[blueribb]

1) Make sure you have the CDROM drive as the first boot device in the bios.

2) If you have 2 cdrom drives, try booting to XP using each one.

3) If you're trying to boot using an XP copy, the cdrom may be having a hard time reading the disk and it skips to the HD boot.

4) You could boot to a start-up floppy disk and FDISK / FORMAT the HD first before trying to boot using the XP disk.

5) You sometimes have to press "enter" for the XP disk to boot. Try tapping the enter button during boot.

6) If all above fails, try another cdrom drive (outboard if necessary)