HELP! HAL.DLL problem with a twist!

[Cort Jestir]

I have a dual-boot Intel box running Win 98SE on the primary partition and Windows XP Home on another FAT32 partition.

Coming back from a break, I noticed my machine (which was running XP at the time) had locked up. I hit the reset switch and was greeted by the infamous HAL.DLL is corrupt error (Please reinstall...) after choosing to boot into XP.

After scouring this board and others I found information on the Recovery Console procedures with BOOTCFG to see if was a boot.ini problem.

I noticed things might be a little off when the RC did not prompt me to choose an installation to recover or repair. I tried BOOTCFG /SCAN anyway and came up with "Error: Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system, which would prevent Bootcfg from successfully scanning. Use chkdsk to detect any errors."

I ran chkdsk on the XP partition (E:) and came up with the error: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems."

Running DISKPART confirmed that the partition on which XP resides is "unknown". It can recognize all other partitions, however.

Here's the twist (if it is one)...

The weird thing is I can boot into 98SE just fine AND view files, navigate around, and write to the XP partition. I ran a chkdsk on the XP partition from 98 and it repaired a few minor errors with file sizes. I rebooted hoping that may solve the problem but to no avail. So in short, 98SE can see the FAT32 partition and for some reason, XP can't right now.

Any advice?

TIA, CJ

[Markoman01027]

Have you tried getting the DLL file from your XP CD?

Looks like you got a bad install of XP and it's taking files along the ride.

[Cort Jestir]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the input. I have tried that and it also didn't work. I did notice that the old corrupt hal.dll was a little larger than the fresh one I extracted from the CAB file so they must be different.

Any other ideas?

Tx again. CJ

[Tuf]

The HAL layer is how XP determines how to deal with your hardware and power management. While it affects you as a Windows problem it is possible it is a bios issue.

Normally I have had to reinstall Windows to fix problems with the HAL layer. But there is an interesting article over at Kelly's that you might find helpful:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

[Cort Jestir]

Tx for the extra info Tuf,

It turns out that I did what you did which was to reinstall XP. It certainly seems to have done the trick and I have my system up and running again with minimal loss of data.

I'm intrigued that it may be a BIOS issue. I have been updating XP with relevant updates and patches and am now wondering if a new patch or update from M$ threw the BIOS for a loop. Wouldn't be the first time it has happened.

Tx to all again.
-CJ

[Tuf]

Some bios manufaturers started listing bios' as ACPI compliant when the standard came out. Some were and quite a few didn't actually work out to be. Remember all the problems there were with computers coming out of stand by?

So basically Microsoft made their own list by bios number and sometimes by mobo ID. If M$ thinks the bios is not ACPI compliant it will not install the HAL layer to work that way. The problem can be compounded by the fact that some blacklisted mobos can become ACPI compliant with the correct bios code upgrade. But unless you force the install XP will install like it is an AT system with no Advanced Power Management.

It is actually a good system and it works far more times than it causes problems. There are only a handful of boards that will need this extra work by the installer.

I have one of the boards that it affects and it sounds like you may also.