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I added a new hdd in xp and can never boot in again

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wes456

Technical User
Dec 17, 2002
3
CA
Hi there,

I have been stomped by xp's incapability to upgrade any hdd. It has happened to me twice already when I wanted to add a new hdd but always get the hal.dll corrupt msg on booting up with the new drive plugged in.

When I take out the drive, it works again though.

Please help.

Thanks for your time.
 
Have you tried swapping the cables?

Does the BIOS autodetect the new disk as HD0 or 1?

If 0, then try setting the jumpers on both disks to CS. If that doesn't work, try setting drive 0 (your existing disk) to Master and drive 1 (the new drive) to Slave, or DS.

Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
 
Recognize your frustration but would suggest you're misdirecting that frustration...(as when you shoot a bear and the bear then knocks down a tree)

These are internal or external drives? (what model are they?)

Are we sure XP supports the drives? (as in checking the hardware compatibility list)
 
Okay mate

install the

the Obvious check the drive allocation, don't mix CD-ROM and HD on same IDE channel

at POST enter BIOS setup and auto detect or install the HD save and reboot in safe mode xp will then find the drive

 
Nice try everyone I have tried all these steps. And yes they are windows xp compatible. After reloading xp everything always works fine after that hal.dll error pops up when a new drive is added.

On the other hand, if I remove the new drive machine will work fine even without reloading.

Please keep your suggestions coming and maybe I will be able to find a way to not having to reload my machine when I want to add a new hdd.

Thanks
 
You've probably got a CDROM or DVD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE channel, right? I suggest removing any devices on it and adding the new hard drive there as a test. Does the same thing happen?

It could be that Windows XP activation security is detecting an unknown presence and requesting that you "re-activate" the product. This is in place to deter illegal copies of XP running.

While "re-activating", perhaps you should ask Microsoft if nothing seems to help... ~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
 
cdogg, this i havent tried yet. If I take the cdrom out on second ide channel and put in the hdd and it works. Will I still be allowed to plug back and use my cdrom?

Have you tried htis?
 
Is the jumper on the new hard drive set to master or single drive? It should be set to slave. Also, check the label (and/or the manufacturers website) for the original drive. Some brands (Western Digital is one) come from the factory with the jumper set for 'single' which is not master or slave. I discover this with the opposite of your problem. One time when I took a slave out of a machine, and the master wouln't boot - had to set the jumper back to single to make it work by itself.
 
wes,
To be honest, I don't know. It's about all I could think of. If you've read up on the hal.dll, you'd know that it is tied directly to XP's hardware interface, including the boot sequence. The boot.ini (if it exists) may have an invalid entry. Take a closer look at CitrixEngineer's post above. He kindly gives you an example of why the boot.ini file might become corrupted. The boot drive needs to stay the same number (probably 0).


Read this MS article for all the info you'll need to troubleshoot:

~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
 
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