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farggousq · 09:44 AM

I posted this in the sticky, but for expidited answers, i figured i would start a thread.

Ok, i cant figure this out. I have installed Boot Camp, partitiond the drive got my drivers, and installed windows. I have a fresh copy of XP SP2. After the drive is formatted and it installs, and the computer restarts, it says windows cannot load because the file C: \windows\system32\hal.dll is corrupted or missing. i have redone the install, reformatted the partiton, even destryed it and redone from scratch, but that file is still jacked. And i dont know DOS well enough to manually load the file on to the drive.

Any help you can throw my way will be greatly appreciated.

harrisjamieh · Jun 13, 2006, 09:35 AM

When you say a 'fresh copy of XP SP2', do you mean a full retail version, or is it a copy, or not a retail or OEM version etc, ie its not a dell disc or anything?

ghporter · Jun 13, 2006, 09:44 AM

The "hal.dll" file is the "hardware abstraction layer" driver-it's what allows the OS to manipulate the hardware. In some cases, such as with a "for Dell computers only" install disc, the hal.dll file may be different, taylored for only Dell hardware. Or, as was poitned out, you might be having problems because the non-official CD copy you have was not burned properly or was copied from a damaged disc.

Answer harrisjameih's questions, and we may be able to help you straighten this out.

farggousq · Jun 13, 2006, 11:02 AM

Its not a copy, or dell disc. It is a brand new windows holographic CD from Best Buy. Thats why im so confused that its corrupted. And the file does install, because i went through the directory after the install, its not listed, but if it try to make the directory, it says its already there. So yea.

farggousq · Jun 13, 2006, 01:39 PM

Im starting to think, maby its a bad windows CD? And if it is, then how can i get a good copy of that .dll file, and get it on to the windows partition. I would think i would have to get into DOS, and have a cd in the drive with the file on it. But the proccess of getting said file on to the hard drive is beyond me. Or if it would even work.

deanbrady69 · Jun 28, 2006, 10:16 PM

So I was all excited about Boot Camp and ran out and bought a Mac Book Pro. I fought with the asst to get the partioning to work, ended up buying idefrag and let it clean up the drive to a point where the asst was happy. Then put in my XPSP2 CD (from MS - I'm a partner) and I get a corrupt file during the file copy. Ok... possilbe the disk is bad although I've used it on other machines in testing.

Get a second CD, now it installed but during the first reboot, I get a black screen with hal.dll missing error. I see other posts about this but no real explantion of how to fix it. I've tried to do the install 4 times and same problem.

Ideas?

Dean
The Brady Report
http://www.thebradyreport.com

ghporter · Jun 28, 2006, 10:28 PM

I'm assuming your Mac's got the latest firmware? </grasping at straws>

deanbrady69 · Jun 29, 2006, 09:09 AM

Yes, everything is up to date. I tried Vista (just because I'm stupid) and it worked but with lots of driver issues. I extracted the installed from the Driver CD and got "most" of the stuff to work but the keyboard stopped working after the reboot.

I really don't want Vista on it since I have that running on a desktop for testing. I need something stable. I may go pick up yet another XP CD and see what happens.

I have Parallels running and it's not bad, just not as quick as running native.

Bizzare...

Moose · 04:12 PM

Boot into Mac OS X.
In BootCamp Assistant, remove the Windows partition.
Reboot per request.
In BootCamp Assistant, repartition for Windows.
Reboot into XP Installer.

Edited to add:

Pretty much anytime the install goes haywire for any reason whatsoever, you have to do that procedure.

colbyjack70 · Jul 12, 2006, 04:07 PM

Update to my situation. I got Xp to work on my 20" Imac finnaly. I Started doing a alot of reasearch on DOS so i could manuually repair or replace the corrupt file. But i soon found that for some reason the "copy" command in DOS wouldent work. So i tried one last time just because, to install XP. I went into OSX, destroyed the partition through Bootcamp, and recreated it. Then while in the XP setup program, i destroyed the 32gb partion i created, and just for kicks i also destroyed the 200mb partion that bootcamp creates. Then i reformated the unformated space for windows. So now i had ~220gb for OSX and 32 for XP. I then proceeded to install XP on the fresh NTFS partition. The Imac restarted, and alas, no corrupt Hal.dll. Not sure why, but destrying the 200mb partion allowed windows to install. ??

Also, i had tried to put Vista on before i tried XP, so all i can guess is that during the vista install, something got put in the 200mb partion that XP really didnt like, and destrying it and adding it to the NTFS partion allowed XP to install.

Yey XP

Moose · Jul 12, 2006, 04:18 PM

Originally Posted by colbyjack70

Not sure why, but destrying the 200mb partion allowed windows to install. ??

I'm not quite sure what BootCamp does to things when it boots into the installer, but I bet that had more to do with it than anything else you did.

A1phaGeek · Dec 24, 2007, 06:51 PM

From my research this stems from a boot.ini file error. I have run into this with re-partitioning, installing parallels, and with trying to manually (with osx drive utility) reformat my drive. The only solution is to use bootcamp to do ALL drive setup work.

For my parallels install I found that the annoying workaround was to hold down F8 and select the "proper" boot. this was annoying enough that I thought i'd just re-install windows. Wow was that a mistake. I did not realize the hal.dll hell I was about to enter. I tried many many wrong solution before I got to where I am today. I Just failed the latest. I am now going to test my Time machine and erase the WHOLE disk, then boot camp partition, then re install xp.

What a crock o ...

A1phaGeek · Dec 24, 2007, 06:58 PM

disk utility (mac) did not see, nor did Boot camp recover a very small unpartitioned space on my hard drive. It is only visible when I am trying to install XP. According to my research (hours and hours), bootcamp xp install ONLY work when there is two and only two partitions, and the windows has the boot.ini file that was created by the bootcamp assistant program. I think that this was the root issue. I'll keep keep you informed if the full erase works.

What a pain.

ghporter · Dec 24, 2007, 08:57 PM

You will indeed see a number of small partitions from the XP installer. They are irrelevant-simply choose the one labeled "C:" and everything is fine.