The Story:
I was back home last weekend, at my parents house. They have a Windows XP Home - Dell Demension 2400 (i think) that's a few years old.
They only had windows firewall for years but we thought their threat level was below the average user because they have 26.4kbps dial-up. I installed avast anti-virus on their computer and after running a scan it picked up a couple Trojans, so i quarantined them.
Then i proceeded to clean the computer via ScanDisk/DiskCleanup and Disk Defrag from Windows System Tools. After i get ScanDisk running i leave the computer because it takes a while, but when I return there are like 7 errors of files I did not recognize that had been removed. The error messages suggested i re-insert the windows CD to replace and missing or damaged files. But i thought this was just a windows error because all i was doing was a regular old Disk Cleanup. So i closed the errors and restarted the computer.
When it reboots I see a message in DOS format saying something like 'windows is missing a critical file from somethingsomethingwin32somethingsomething.hal.dll'
I spent the next 5 hours on tech support with Dell and i learn that hal.dll is a boot file and that the files and everything that is on the computer is still there, it's just blocked because of this file.
We tried a few steps in the DOS-like prompt (i dunno what that part of windows is called that somewhere after bootscreen but before welcome screen, and the screen is all black but there is white text, so i just call this DOS. if someone could clarify what it's really called that would be appreciated.)
We got to the point where nothing was working to repair the file using the windows CD so they were going to have me reformat it.
I was wondering what could be done to fix this problem aside from reformatting.
If reformatting is required, my mother has some emails and addresses she would like to save, and is there anything i can do personally as opposed to spending $100/hr for data recovery at some store.
Furthermore, how could this have happened given the steps which caused it? Could a Trojan that avast found have corrupted the file? or does Disk Cleanup frequently cause this problem?
Any other information that could help me is greatly appreciated as well.
Thanks.
summed up--> After running Disk Cleanup, I removed a file: hal.dll. Now my computer wont boot.
I was back home last weekend, at my parents house. They have a Windows XP Home - Dell Demension 2400 (i think) that's a few years old.
They only had windows firewall for years but we thought their threat level was below the average user because they have 26.4kbps dial-up. I installed avast anti-virus on their computer and after running a scan it picked up a couple Trojans, so i quarantined them.
Then i proceeded to clean the computer via ScanDisk/DiskCleanup and Disk Defrag from Windows System Tools. After i get ScanDisk running i leave the computer because it takes a while, but when I return there are like 7 errors of files I did not recognize that had been removed. The error messages suggested i re-insert the windows CD to replace and missing or damaged files. But i thought this was just a windows error because all i was doing was a regular old Disk Cleanup. So i closed the errors and restarted the computer.
When it reboots I see a message in DOS format saying something like 'windows is missing a critical file from somethingsomethingwin32somethingsomething.hal.dll'
I spent the next 5 hours on tech support with Dell and i learn that hal.dll is a boot file and that the files and everything that is on the computer is still there, it's just blocked because of this file.
We tried a few steps in the DOS-like prompt (i dunno what that part of windows is called that somewhere after bootscreen but before welcome screen, and the screen is all black but there is white text, so i just call this DOS. if someone could clarify what it's really called that would be appreciated.)
We got to the point where nothing was working to repair the file using the windows CD so they were going to have me reformat it.
I was wondering what could be done to fix this problem aside from reformatting.
If reformatting is required, my mother has some emails and addresses she would like to save, and is there anything i can do personally as opposed to spending $100/hr for data recovery at some store.
Furthermore, how could this have happened given the steps which caused it? Could a Trojan that avast found have corrupted the file? or does Disk Cleanup frequently cause this problem?
Any other information that could help me is greatly appreciated as well.
Thanks.
summed up--> After running Disk Cleanup, I removed a file: hal.dll. Now my computer wont boot.
