XP Recovery Disk - Can't Find File - Why?

[rrssss]

Hello forum,

I am no longer able to boot into Windows XP Home sp1 without the error message "<windows root>\system32\hal.dll, can not find this file, please reinstall it".

But whenever I boot into the XP recovery disk and change into the system32 directory and use the copy command - copy hal.dll - it says it can't find the file. It will copy any other file in that directory, but not that particular one. And when I use the dir command, hal.dll appears in the list.

Does the file that needs to be copied have to already be installed in the Windows installation (C:\Windows)? That would defeat the purpose of the recovery disk since it is used to reinstall missing files. Surely the file is not missing on the recovery disk! Is there a way to copy this file back into the Windows installation?

Please help,

Roy

[Catweazle]

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

[rrssss]

Hello again forum,

About that file hal.dll, it can't be touched at all while in the XP recovery console disk. I am trying to copy that file back into the /system32 directory to see if my computer will boot since I keep getting the error message "can't find hal.dll" upon boot up of XP.

While in the recovery console, if I try to copy hal.dll, I get a message saying the system can not find the file.

If I try to change the attributes of hal.dll, I get "file can not be opened".

If I try to expand hal.dl_ from the i386 directory, I get a message that says "unable to create the file".

And if I try to delete hal.dll, the message says "delete operation failed".

I followed the link that Catweazle supplied me with (above) and tried del. C:\boot.ini, bootcfg and fixboot, but upon bootup of XP, it still says it can't find hal.dll.

I would be most grateful if somebody could offer me a ray of hope on getting Windows XP to boot again. I have tons of programs installed on it and I sure do not want to do a clean install.

Please help if you can,
Roy