Yup, Antioed hit it all, unfortunately after talking with sunflower in private message discovered she has no Windows XP disks at all, she does have a restore disk, but it's for a different brand of machine. (Egad, I hate 'restore disks', it should be required to give an actual copy of WIndows XP, not a restore disk).

I did advise she could simply borrow a disk from a friend. But the best thing she could do would be to make the Windows XP boot disk I sent her to MS's website to download. Then she could merely copy the hal.dll file from her working machine over to a floppy to copy to her sons machine. (Of course, that might not fix it, since it's possible her boot.ini has been corrupted, which could cause the same error...however since she did say she was deleting duplicate files, I assumed that she probably really did lose her hal.dll file).

I'm hoping she got somewhere with all this, but I fear it's all a bit confusing.

Laura, you will definitely need to purchase a new copy of Windows XP. You can't 'borrow' a copy off a friend, as some have suggested here, because the Windows Product Activation anti-piracy measures will kick in after a short period of time, rendering your system inoperable.

If the vendor can't (or won't) replace the CDs for you, then I'm afraid you're in for some expense.

Of course, she said she lost the disk, she may well still have her activation number in her documentation. Hard to tell.

Either way, I told her the same thing, she should buy a real copy of XP, since now her sons machine has nothing.

you get the same msg when there somthing wrong with the boot.ini file as well. when you get the xp cd boot to the recovery console and use this command BootCfg /Rebuild and except the defalts

The "anti-piracy measures" look at the licensing information, not which CD is used. If anything the individual would have to request their license information or purchase a new one...once again this is independent of the install media that is used.

I have several copies of Windows XP here and I can assure you that if you use one CD to install, and try to use the key-code from a different one, then the install will NOT complete because an error is encountered with the installation routine rejecting the CD key-code.
.

I believe you, sounds like something MS would do with each new pressing of the CD.

However, I can attest to the fact the CD key will work if the two CD's are from the same time period, if you take my meaning. I have two XP cds, one I've tucked away for safekeeping, the other I use for both my XP machines. Bought them both the same day at Staples. I'm guessing that each new successive pressing of the CD has all the most recent updates on them, and that you need to have an activation code from a CD pressed in that 'batch'. But this is a guess, I only know that my one CD will take the code from my other no problem. (Heheh, guess I'm lucky).

Anyway, it's bad news for Sunflower, since it's unlikely she'll be able to use her old activation code for her sons machine with another copy of XP, by the sound of it.

Edit: Hmm, you both got me thinking. I do use one XP cd, but now that I think of it, I seem to recall I did originally INSTALL my other machine with the second CD of XP. I've reinstalled XP on this machine 3 times since then, but the other machine is still running the original install. I do use the CD if I have to grab windows components or what have you, but that's not the same. So...I'm now unsure if the numbers would work. I'll have to try it someday...(though my other XP machine is really just a home server, and never gets any real use, and doesn't NEED a reinstall). Open mouth, insert foot, heheh. Mmmm! Sweatsocks. ^^;

Yep...I'm a bonehead...XP Home probably does care. The 2003 server versions care, Office 2003 definitely cares, XP Pro in a corporate environment doesn't, which is all I do with XP at this point. I forget that they're probably more strict with XP Home since it would be per computer. Either way...if a person had a license or can prove that they bought the machine they shouldn't have to buy Windows again...that would just be wrong. The place who sold it should assist that user with obtaining a proper media and license replacement from Microsoft and I know there's steps you can take for that. Thanks for the correction.

If the original installation of Windows XP is an OEM edition, then the license must be obtained from the system manufacturer, not from Microsoft. Microsoft is only accountable for the licenses which apply to the full retail version.

That's part of the OEM 'deal' I'm afraid, and why the OEM version is less expensive.

This is a bit extreme, but sometimes desperate situations call for desperate measures, and it seems you may fall into that catagory.

Remove the hard drive and set it up in another computer as a slave drive (if you're not sure how to do this, request more detailed instructions).

Now that you have it in another computer, download Restoration from here:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
(It will fit on a floppy disk if you wish to run it from there)

Double-click on Restoration.exe and the program will open up. In the Drives box, click the drop-down arrow and select the drive that had the missing .dll (you may need to go to My Computer first to find the correct drive).

In the empty box below that, type in hal.dll and then click Search Deleted Files.

With any luck, it will find the deleted file. If it does, click on it to highlight it, and then click on Restore by Copying.

Navigate to the folder it should go back into. Note: it will not be on the "C" drive since it's in another computer, it will be on whatever drive your slave is showing as, like f:\WINDOWS\system32.

If all this has gone correctly, put the drive back into the original computer and see if it will boot up.