Missing HAL.dll - twice in one year 2

[goombawaho]

This is NOT a question about how to fix this error. There are various threads around on how to fix it and the cure may be only marginally better than the fix. It's the old no boot, black screen saying "following file is missing or corrupt windows root\system32\hal.dll"

My question is WHY would this happen to the same guy twice in one year?? I didn't know what to tell him. I know it can't be answered definitively, but here's what I observed and tested.

Dell Dimension 3000 with 512MB RAM - XP SP3
Hard drive tested fine
Memory tested fine
No viruses present
No incorrect power downs due to power outage


Should I just tell him he's an unlucky so and so............

 

[DrB0b]

If it was me, I would be asking him what he is installing once he gets a new OS home, how he is uninstalling things, and which programs is he trying to use. Is he trying to use something designed for 98 or something for 7 and the install is breaking the system? Installing something that his system isnt designed to handle?

It's possible that he is one of the people that get struck by lightning 10 times but odds are it's something being done to the PC. A good portion of these issues are PEBKAU(problem exists between keyboard and user)

Could always rock Acronis and have an image set up for when he does mess it up again.

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[goombawaho]

He's not running anything unusual nor is he a tinkerer. Office 2003 and a few programs related to a bible database.

I don't know - it just doesn't seem right.

 

[guitarzan]

How you fix the problem may provide clues to what this guy is doing (or possibly, what someone else is doing to him???) I mean, if HAL.DLL is actually missing, I would suspect foul play.

 

[BadBigBen]

Goom,

this can happen when the boot order gets scrambled (or better said when the attached drives get mixed up in the way they are added to the OS) and XP tries to find the HAL.DLL file on the wrong drive...

as a test, you could remove the data drive (if more than one HDD is attached) or the optical drive and then attempt to boot...

if the drives are IDE, then make sure that the OS drive is the primary master, and the CD/DVD is the secondary master or slave... if they are SATA, attach the ODD to the last SATA port and the OS drive to the first (SATA 0)...

I would also disable the BIOS setting "BOOT OTHER"/"Boot from USB" (or however they are called, no real consistency through out the BIOS world)...






Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

This is a single hard drive PC with 2 optical drives. He added an external USB backup drive in the interval between when I fixed it the first time and this time.

But, it had been working fine for months after adding that new drive.

The HAL.dll file was actually there and not missing. The boot.ini file WAS missing off the boot drive.

Would it be crazy to think that if his machine was running very low on memory and was doing a lot of swap file activity, it could have corrupted the HAL.dll????

 

[kjv1611]

Hmm, data corruption can cause all sorts of weird things. Not to mention if one stick of RAM is going bad - talk about weird things goin on...

Another possibility, I think, could be the AV program. or firewall if it has a progrma guard... sometimes those can go haywire if the user clicked "block" at the wrong time, for isntance. Or if an over-active AV decided to quarantine a Windows system file..

 

[BadBigBen]

The boot.ini file WAS missing off the boot drive.

wow, never seen that... but in theory (possibly practically too) this should not halt the BOOT sequence, as XP then continues to boot by searching for the files, needed to boot, on the HDD that is marked as ACTIVE, specifically in the folder named "C:\Windows" (NT and W2k look for "C:\WINNT")...

Would it be crazy to think that if his machine was running very low on memory and was doing a lot of swap file activity, it could have corrupted the HAL.dll????

Yes... it would be crazy to think that...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

Well, then I guess it will remain a mystery as I see no GOOD reason for this happening to him twice.

kjv1611 - All memory tested OK, so I don't know if you were inferring that it was bad OR what could happen IF it were bad.

 

[kjv1611]

Naa, can't infer that it IS without being there. But it is a tricky culprit.