Member Avatar for Aurealeus

Recently, my well maintained 80g IBM DeskStar HD w/ pre-installed XPHome permanently crashed after three years running and would no longer re-boot. This happened almost without warning as a result of several BSoD's over a period of the last two days it operated. I was able to save all my personal files that were located in My Documents to my LaCie 500 External Drive before the final crash. I have since replaced the internal drive with a new Seagate 160g and am having trouble installing setup after booting from my back-up CD.

Setup installs the setup files from the CD but after it auto-boots, a DOS error reports that the "hal.dll file is missing or corrupt" and instructs me to re-boot. After numerous unsucessful tries, I finally installed Win98SE from an old CD. After spending a considerable amount of time installing Win98 as well as a few other essentials, (firewall, WinZip, A-Reader, etc.) as well as reconfiguring my ISP and mail account to get minimally up-and-running to search for help online with this problem, I've learned that XP doesn't always discover the proper HAL to use. I've also learned since, that I can choose the HAL by pressing F5 when booting from CD for the proper (ACPI) file. In further consideration, I have also downloaded a HAL to floppy as backup. Just before the final crash, I managed to do a system restore, and ran AVG, Spybot and Reg. Mechanic as well as a complete defrag of the drive. After perfoming these and a few other maintenence tweaks and diagnostics, I attempted one last re-boot before attempting to make a "Ghost" image of my HD but I was too late. After many numerous attempts, the drive began clicking and whining unusually, and would no longer re-boot. I never got the chance to make a ghost image and no other OS backup exists except for what remains on my original un-bootable drive.

Before I attempt another clean install of XP on the new drive, I have done a bit more research online and thought it best to get some guru input here before wiping clean and reformatting my new drive since would like to avoid another fail and having to intall Win98 and reconfigure my ISP all over again.

I am pretty computer literate and quite savvy but by no means a techie. Any advice and/or links to that can quide me to trouble free installation methods that can help me eliminate or alleviate DOS type errors same/similar to the above in order to partition and install XP on its own NTFS partition is greatly appreciated. I want to do a clean install and not an upgrade. After that, it should be smooth sailing and I promise not to bother any of you again with this problem.

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As suggested, creating a full image of the current Win98 setup is the first and safest step before any further wipes. The common causes for an XP install to report "hal.dll missing" after the text‑mode portion finish are (1) the installer not having the correct mass‑storage driver for the controller mode in BIOS (IDE vs AHCI/RAID) and (2) an incompatible HAL selection on systems with different ACPI/MP configs. The following checklist and Recovery Console steps address both causes plus the usual hardware checks that are often overlooked.

Pre‑install checklist (do these before attempting another clean XP install): make a disk image (Ghost or similar) and create bootable recovery media; run a memory test (MemTest86) and a drive diagnostic (manufacturer tool) on the new Seagate; inspect and reseat cables and power; set the motherboard SATA mode to IDE/Compatibility (or disable AHCI/RAID) if using an original XP CD that lacks SATA drivers; if AHCI/RAID must remain enabled, prepare the OEM storage driver on floppy (F6 at setup) or slipstream the driver and service pack into a new install CD (nLite was the common tool for this era). Also try burning the XP CD at low speed or use a different disc if installs behave oddly.

If the HAL or boot files are already missing/corrupt, use the Recovery Console from the XP CD and restore the HAL from the CD’s i386 folder, then repair the boot configuration. Typical sequence (adjust drive letters if Windows is not on C:):

boot from XP CD, press R for Recovery Console
dir c:\   (and dir d:\)   <-- confirm Windows folder location
expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
fixboot c:
fixmbr
bootcfg /rebuild
chkdsk /r
exit

Avoid downloading a random hal.dll from the web — mismatched HALs or malware are real risks. If the error persists after verifying BIOS mode, drivers and hardware, try a different XP disc (slipstreamed with SP2/SP3 and chipset/mass‑storage drivers) or install temporarily using a different controller port.

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Member Avatar for Thong_Ispector

One suggestion...
Create a ghost of the Win98 system before you continue. At least it will let you get back to this point with little problem.

Member Avatar for Aurealeus

One suggestion...
Create a ghost of the Win98 system before you continue. At least it will let you get back to this point with little problem.

Thanx.... great idea.... I will conjure up the ghost right after this post.

I'm so xpdiskabobulated at this point that I couldn't even think of that.

I'm still researching online and finding some other fix's regarding the HAL file
and printing them out for later if I should run into problems on another install
attempt.

Since I just posted my problem this afternoon, I'll wait another day or so in
hope that someone here might have a different answer or can confirm that I
won't run into any other problem aside from the HAL before attempting any fix
or another install of XP.

If after applying any fix in another attempt at installing XP and none work,
then I'll use the Ghost of 98 to return to my present state as you suggest.

Although I'm grateful to have Win98 handy... Like the song goes...
I wAnT mY eM - eX - Peee........ Money for nothing and Chicks for free.

:cry: "Two Heads Are Better Than One" :cheesy:

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