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Troubleshooting missing HAL.DLL and boot configuration issues in Windows XP

Published on 2nd August 2007 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

My PC is very poorly at the moment and Windows XP re-installation is the prescribed course of action. However, I have getting errors reporting missing or damaged HAL.DLL at the first reboot of the system during installation. Because I thought that there might be hard disk confusion, I unplugged all but the Windows boot drive. That only gave me an error about hard drives not being set up properly. Thankfully, a quick outing on Google turned up a few ideas. However, I should really have started with Microsoft, since they have an article on the problem. About.com has also got something to offer on the subject and seems to be a good resource on installing XP to boot: I had forgotten how to do a repair installation and couldn't find the place in the installation menus. In any event, a complete refresh should be a good thing in the long run, even if it will be a very disruptive process. While I did consider moving to Vista at that point, bringing XP back online seemed the quickest route to getting things back together again. Strangely, I feel like a fish out of water right now, but that'll soon change...

Update: It was, in fact, my boot.ini that was causing this and replacement of the existing contents with defaults resolved the problem...

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