You need your operating system cd.

You have to put the cd in, disconnect any USB devices from your computer and take the floppy out and then restart. When it says "Press any key to boot from the cd.." hit enter.

From this point on you will have to wait a couple of minutes. Then you will get to a screen that says: "To setup windows xp now hit Enter" so do that.

Then you have to agree with the license agreement by hitting F8

Then on the next screen you will be asked if you want to repair. Hit R to repair.

The repair will take up to 40 minutes.

Hope it works.

I purchased the pc used with the software already loaded, an other options. Can I copy a file from my other win xp pc and install?

Thnks so much for you time

The hal.dll file is created during install from 5 other dlls. HAL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer and it's the interface between the system drivers and the actual hardware.

Copying hal.dll will not resolve the problem.

A lot of times the file will be reported missing due to corruption of the boot sector or of the file system. However for the commands that will fix that you will still need a copy of the Windows XP cd.

If your computer is made by an Original Equipment Manufacturer like Dell for example you could contact them for a copy of the cd.

Here is a more comprehensive article on Hal.dll errors: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

Sometimes hal.dll can be recreated. But, chances are, you're looking at a deeper issue, as those described in the great link gemini4 provided. Or, you could even be looking at hardware failure-- the drive itself could be bad, or the filesystem could be damaged.

Best thing to do is acquire a Windows XP disc for your system, and try to run something like CHKDSK from recovery console, or get some hardware diagnostic programs for your system. At the very worst, you're going to need an XP disc, still, because you'll soon be faced with an OS reinstall in light of few other options.

Most of the time for a Hal.dll issue I run a chkdsk /R, if that does not work, I test out the drive and a great deal of the time I have a bad drive, after that I will run the repair install.

if I follow your instructions will I have to reinstall all the programs that I had on the system?

I'd try a memtest first, too, just in case (especially since it doesn't involve waiting through a complete Windows install). I can actually cause this error on my media machine by putting in this one stick of RAM I have that is known-bad. Make a memtest floppy or CD-ROM, boot to it, and let it run for at least 3 hours. If there is even one error, one of your memory modules is faulty.

As stated below please supply me with solution.

You don't need a DOS boot disk. What you need is the Windows XP installation CD.

Follow this fix:

http://www.myfixes.com/articles/system