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My dual boot snafu looks less alarming this morning

909 views 8 replies 3 participants last post by  philippus 
#1 ·
I finally got over the initial shock of not being able to load windows XP after installing it yesterday...certainly being able to boot to my old familiar W2K helped restore some mental equilibrium (along with the requisite amount of caffeine) and from here I definitely have a bit more hope that I can fix it somehow.

Here's the quick back-story: At the end of an almost (?) successful setup of a dual boot system (WIN2K Pro is the original OS, I'm adding XP Pro to a different hard drive) I got the following when the installation attempted the last restart to open XP:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file

XP seems to be completely installed, when I access my H drive (the one I installed XP on) I find what looks like the entire directory, when I open the system32 folder in the root directory the hal.dll file is there (all 81,152 delinquent bytes of it) but I still don't know how to "reinstall" it or convince windows that it's really a GOOD uncorrupted file...

I cannot get it to boot to XP in safe mode no matter how trickily I manipulate the F8 and Enter keys during startup...

I did manage to boot from the CD to get to a "repair XP" install and that opened the recovery console, but I haven't a clue where to go from there or what to type so I exited. There now are 3 options at the boot-loader prompt instead of 2, the choices are now: Boot to WIN2K, boot to XP Pro or to go to the WinXP Pro Recovery Setup.

So what's next?
 
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#2 ·
Yes, hall.dll is never missing and that error is an error. It means that your boot files are pointing to the wrong partition.

Do you have the dual-boot menu at startup from the XP installation? Check the contents of your XP boot.ini and see where it points.
 
#6 ·
OK, I got into the recovery console and using the command bootcfg/list I found the following:

[1] “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”
OS Load Options: /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
OS Location: H:\WINDOWS

[2] “Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: C:\WINNT

Using bootcfg/rebuild I changed things until it was:

[1] “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: H:\WINDOWS

[2] “Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: C:\WINNT

And something I did must not be quite right, XP still won’t boot and I get the same error message about hal.dll

dang!
 
#7 ·
OK, I got into the recovery console and using the command bootcfg/list I found the following:

[1] “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”
OS Load Options: /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
OS Location: H:\WINDOWS

[2] “Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: C:\WINNT

Using bootcfg/rebuild I changed things until it was:

[1] “Microsoft Windows XP Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: H:\WINDOWS

[2] “Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional”
OS Load Options: /fastdetect
OS Location: C:\WINNT

And something I did must not be quite right, XP still won’t boot and I get the same error message about hal.dll

dang!
why did you remove noexecute=optin ?
here is what my boot.ini looks like.

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode XP" /safeboot:network /sos /bootlog
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Safe Mode XP" /safeboot:network /sos /bootlog
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

if you can boot to c drive you should be able to open H drive from there and find the boot.ini
 
#8 ·
There is NO boot.ini file on the H drive anywhere in the WINDOWS folder...(see below post)

(Could that be because the installation never DID finish ? Remember -- I initially came across the error message about the "missing or corrupt" hal.dll when the computer rebooted itself during the installation of XP Pro...)
 
#9 ·
why did you remove noexecute=optin ?
(Um....because I didn't (don't) know what I was doing...:()

Here's a pasted copy of the current (more correct?) W2K boot.ini on the C drive:

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

And there isn't any boot.ini file on the H drive, there's only the following three items:

System Volume Information (greyed out folder)
WINDOWS (folder)
RECYCLER (greyed out folder)
 
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