please help.total newbie!error on boot up.

J

jimbo76

Geek Trainee
hi all,im really hoping i have found the right forum,because im a tad hacked off at the moment,regarding my very first pc i have built.all was going fine,i had an o.s up and running(xp) but 1 thing was bugging me,on the first boot up,i had partitioned my 250 gig hard drive in 1 part at only 100 gig.wasting 150 gig!it was all running fine but i wanted everything perfect,so i started asking around how to re partiition the hard drive.somebody suggested i re boot xp and do it that way,so i did,and it re started,its starts up fine,even able to get into the bio's.but straight after that,it gives me a choice of which os to install,2 variations of xp.but it freezes,then goes on a screen and says this message-
"windowws 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"
ok,so i tried booting from the dvd rom,no joy whatsoever.
as i said,im a total noobie when it comes to building and trouble shooting so ANY help would be greatly appreiciated.
how would i solve this?can i wipe the hard drive and just start again?how about putting a new hard drive in?
any advice you can give me would be ace.
thanks
jimbo
 
Hah! Yet another reason why I'll never let Microsoft near any of my main computers. It seems that this is a known problem with Win XP. The first thing you should try is to install SP2 if you haven't done so already. If that doesn't work check out this page. If that doesn't help than a Google search will give you LOTS of links to choose from.
 
If you haven't already invested a lot of time in setting up Windows XP, you'd probably just be better off reinstalling XP from scratch, repartitioning your drive at that time.

-AT
 
Why muck about?

Obviously the windows installation got completely messed up.

Pop in the CD, start fresh. I found this guide which might help:

http://www.resnet.uni.edu/docs/reformatxp.html

Or maybe try from the 'horse's mouth' here -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q313348#4

Personal recomendation: Print the god damn thing. Do not rely on your memory....

I have mucked up many installation and found thet it is a lot less time consuming and a lot less agrovating to just start again and put any problems to experience.

Good luck, keep it cool, keep it real......
 
ok all,i have tried what you said,but i cant even get to them points.
try booting from cd/dvd instead,i can do that,it then says press any key to boot from cd,but pressing a key does nothing,then it just goes on the screen saying which to boot,xp or xp setup,counts down from 2 and goes to the next screen of death which says <windows root>etc etc.
i would love to reinstall from scratch,but i cant,the keyboard doesnt respond once it gets to the "select which xp"screen.
this is really getting me down,i dont no what to do! :(
 
somebody has told me that this is a critical error.how about if i just get a new hard drive,start again and try fix the old 1 later.will that work you think?
thanks all
 
well it may work, but you must configure your BIOS correctly to boot from the CD and be able to detect you hard disk.
 
i have no idea what really happend.but i have a wireless keyboard,and thats why i couldnt do anything.so i went out and bought an old ps2 board.and low and behold,was able to get into the menu and totaly re partition my harddrive & reboot windows.so i have a fat 250 gig c:drive instead of a thin 100 gig f:drive or whatever it was.
 
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