Windows XP Pro will not load completely

[godai73]

I am working on a computer for a user where Windows XP Pro would almost come up. All I would see is a blue screen and a mouse. The mouse will move, but I am not able to access Task Manager or any icons. The computer is a HP SX 260. The hard drive is as small as a laptop hard drive (we were going to hook it up as a slave on a regular PC, but of course that will not be possible). We ran a Windows repair and check disk on the HD, without any success. We were thinking of reloading Windows ontop of the old windows, but was not sure if all her files will be deleted. We even try booting into Safe Mode and that will not come up. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I forgot to tell you that booting into the Last Known Good Configuration also brings us up to the part where all we see is a blue background and the mouse. Also, there is only one partition on the HD.

 

[Blitze105]

It sounds like a program is not able to start. It might have been turned off, when i say that i mean a program that windows needs to run.

A repair install, if done correctly, will not delete your files.

If that is to risky you may want to look into programs such as explorer.exe and see if that not starting would cause a problem such as this.

 

[SHAWN]

I have the instructions on a repair install in my sig

 

[godai73]

corrupted hal.dll (need assistance)

Blitze105, thanks for the advise. I will try the repair install as a last resort. I can not access task manager when Windows try to come up, so I can not see if explorer.exe is causing any problems.

Ok, so I took out the CD and popped in the floppy drive. I created a Windows XP boot disk and when it was booting up, it mentioned the hal.dll file is missing or corrupt. I turned off the PC and pop in the CD-ROM drive and boot into recovery console. I went to C:\Windows and the hal.dll file is there, so I assume it got corrupted. Now, the Windows XP CD does not have the hal.dll file on it. I put the CD on my own computer and found the hal.dll file under Driver.Cab and SP1.cab. I copy the SP1.cab file to a temp folder on the C drive (http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm), because I want to extract it to copy the hal.dll file to C:\Windows\System32 folder. When I did the Expand command, it said:

'The source file contains multiple files. The -F:filespec option is required to specify which file(s) are to be expanded. -F:* may be used to expand all files'

Well, I tried to use the -F command, but does not work for me. Anyone have any idea how I am suppose to use this command? Or maybe if you know how I can expand the file to copy the hal.dll file to c:\Windows\system32 folder, that would be great too. I will search online to see if I can find out how to do it too. Thanks again.

 

[godai73]

I was able to expand the file and copy the hal.dll file to c:\windows\system32, but now the computer does a continuous reboot (unless I put the XP CD in the CD ROM, then I can still go into XP setup). Any other ideas? If not, I will try to re-install XP over the old one tomorrow afternoon. Thanks in advance.

 

[ShadowFalls]

you copied the wrong hal.dll, there are two you need to worry about, hal.dll and halacpi.dll

You want to extract(command is expand) halacpi.dll (will be displayed as halacpi.dl_ from the I386 directory on the cd to the system32 directory in the systemroot which is usually C:\Windows, delete (command is del) the hal.dll, and rename (command is ren or rename) halacpi.dll to hal.dll

 

[godai73]

ShadowFalls, thanks for the help, but I was not able to expand the halacpi.dl_ file. It says 'The file could not be expanded. No files matching 'halacpi.dll' in halacpi.dl_.' I even tried copying the file to a temp folder to extract it and still receive this same message. The command that I typed after copying the file to a temp folder is:

expand halacpi.dl_ -F:halacpi.dll

Is that the correct command? I would assume so since I used it on a cab file before and it worked.

 

[godai73]

oops, I typed in the wrong command. I was able to use the command:

expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_ c:\windows\system32

and extract the file. I deleted the old hal.dll and renamed the halacpi.dll to hal.dll. I restarted the computer and I am up to the same screen where the icons are suppose to appear, but all I see is a light blue background and the mouse. I can not open Task Manager or right click on the mouse, but the mouse does move. Any other suggestions?

I will keep searching online and see if I can find a solution. Thanks in advance.

 

[godai73]

We were able to purchanse a 2.5 to 3.5 hard disk kit and hook up the small hard drive as a slave to another computer to pull the data off. Thank god for that kit.