boot failure

[ohGrFreak]

I just did a major overhaul of my PC, and now I keep getting a mix of "disc boot failure, insert boot cd" and the ever elusive "hal.dll is missing or corrupt, re-install hal.dll file" the latter really means, "it could be anything, windows' guess is as good as yours".

So here's what I did the first time. I tried the whole insert and recovery console, but the recovery console could not find the file even when i pointed it right there, it couldn't expand or copy. So, I go for broke, do a repair, wait, why's repair not an option on my disc? Okay, I go for a new setup, but don't delete the old setup, so that way I might have the slightest possibility of backing up my files before I perform a complete format again (again because, hello, I just did one right after I installed everything). That did not work at all, it only gave me three Windows to choose from when booting, which, I could not boot any of them anyway.

Now, I took out my drive and said screw it, I'm getting these files no matter what, I put it in my external and moved it to another computer, and backed them up. Now I'm ready for a full format Did a format, installed windows, installed drivers and after ten or so reboots necessary for all drivers and updates, poof! My computer does magic fails to boot. Again.

Well, I restarted it, and I'm on it right now, but is my HDD a goner? It is over 3 years old and has ran 24/7 most of it's life...

I did change the fact that the HDD and the DVD drive are on the same channel, both set to cable select now. That's just because I don't have a sata drive and the mobo only has one IDE channel. Could that effect anything?

Thanks

 

[sPlAtOiD]

No the two on one cable should be alright. Either your hard drive or maybe even the cable is bad. Did the hard drive format ok? Or did it take a long time to format?

 

[ohGrFreak]

A full format for the 250 gb drive always seems to take forever, maybe two hours at the most, which I think is horribly long. The cable is brand new, I should hope it's not bad.

 

[ohGrFreak]

Got a question for you all. I haven't used SATA yet, how would I go about installing the O/S to a sata HDD if I do not have a floppy? I think the driver disc for the motherboard has sata drivers, can I use that instead of a floppy?

This is only if I end up replacing the HDD, I will want to go sata.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

A full format for the 250 gb drive always seems to take forever, maybe two hours at the most, which I think is horribly long. The cable is brand new, I should hope it's not bad.

Yes that seems a long time you could try a disk utility to fix the bad sectors.

And OhgrFreak
You can use the cd you just need to swap it when it prompts you for that driver.Usually after you hit f6 then wait for a few and it will prompt what to do then switch and let it install the driver then switch back before you go foward.

 

[ohGrFreak]

I downloaded the utility from western digital and ran the extended test and it came out roses, I wonder what's going on with this thing then? I wonder if writing zeros to the entire thing and reformatting yet again will help. I wanted the utility to fix any bad sectors, but according to the test, I don't have any.

Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD2500JB-00FUA0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAEP1258677
Firmware Number: 15.05R15
Capacity: 250.06 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 23:12:14, February 17, 2008