Try starting the computer in Safe Mode, then use System Restore to a point before the problems began:

Start or restart the computer.
As soon as the BIOS has finished loading, begin tapping the F8 key on your keyboard; continue to do so until the Windows Advanced Options menu appears (if you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a "keyboard error" message, if you get this message, restart the computer and try again).
Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, scroll to and select the Safe Mode menu item, and then press Enter.

To use System Restore, right click My Computer, go to Properties, go to System Restore, and then to the Restore tab (I believe these are the correct steps, I'm not on an XP computer now to try it).
Search for a Restore Point prior to the date which you began having trouble (if System Restore hasn't been activated, there may not be any restore points available).

Let us know if this works or not.

Another thing you might try: Search your hard drive(s) for a copy of that missing file. You did say you were deleting DUPLICATES, I would assume somewhere on your hard drive there is still one copy of that file. Move that file into your windows/system32 folder, and see if that fixes it.

Well those both sound real good but I can't load windows up at all right after the splash screen I get a black screen with the message. So this is why I'm stuck.

Laura

If you're hitting F8 repeatedly while booting as DLH6213 suggested, you shouldn't get a splash screen, instead you should get a list of options, including one to allow you to boot into safe mode.

Just tryed to do that and no luck I can't do anything when it comes to loading Windows it's like the file is gone..

Laura

It's pointless to hit f8. Your HAL is a hardware list showing what your computer is compatable with. You need to get your hands on a copy of XP one way or the other. All you would have to do from there is boot from the cd, go to the recovery console option, get to your DOS prompt from it, and the copy the file from your cd to where it should be - i think it's in your system32 folder. Evaluation copy of xp would work too, but you need that cd to boot from for sure.

He's right, hal.dll is a critical dll, required by Windows XP to talk to your computer's hardware via the 'Hardware Abstraction Layer'. Unfortunately for you, you do not have a Windows XP disk available to you.

After more research, I've found that you are really in a pickle, two things can cause the error your having: Deletion of the file, which seems to be your situation. The second thing that could cause this is corruption of your boot.ini file. Either way, you need to get that machine booted to find out which of these is your problem.

Hopefully, the URL to Microsoft's page I sent you earlier while we conversed in a private message to get the Windows XP boot disk can get you moving towards solving this problem.

Laura, what you need to do is an In Place Upgrade, instructions are at this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp

But you need to have the CD. Since BestBuy lost your CD, talk to the manager there and see if they will do this for you -- in my opinion it's the least they could do after losing a CD worth a couple of hundred dollars. If they won't do it, I hope you can find a CD somewhere to use. Best of luck to you!

Any XP CD should be ok, if you bought a pre-built PC such as a Toshiba or HP it will usually have a product key/COA on the bottom which would mean you can basically use any XP cd since you have a valid Windows license and it's really the license that matters; not the CD.

I think the hal.dll should get fixed by running the repair option from the XP cd, it's Method 2 on the link that Dl6213 posted. I don't know for sure if the repair option would write a new hal.dll, at the moment I'm too lazy to blow up Windows to find out...I usually wait for my users to do that sort of stuff - maybe one of the smarties in here knows. Either way, if the repair doesn't work then a parallel install is the next best option but all installed programs will be gone, atleast until you can get the previous install of Windows working again.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316941

The section called "Install Windows XP to a new folder" describes steps to perform a parallel install of Windows. This would be particularly good for your problem if the repair doesn't work since when you do the parallel install a new hal.dll would be created and you could copy it to the previous install of Windows and change the boot order back so it boots the old one and you'll get all the programs back.

Good luck!