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Question

problem with system32\hal.dll

by Aug 22, 2011 12:27PM PDT

Help! My non-technical girlfriend bought an HP Pavillion 5 years ago. She never created a Windows XP install/recovery disk, and she never installed Windows XP Recovery Console.

On power-up, the machine is giving the following message: "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: Windows Root\system32\hal.dll"

I know how to do the HP System Recovery, but I'm trying to save a lot of data she didn't back up if possible. I can't figure out how to abort the Win XP attempt and get a command prompt outside/before Windows. I have a clean copy of the file on a USB stick drive and would like to try a "transplant" if I can access the volume directories in DOS.

Does anyone know how I can get to that command prompt outside of Win XP?

Thanks!

Discussion is locked

2 Posts
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Answer
Never found DOS to do this.
by Forum moderator Aug 23, 2011 1:55AM PDT

However a LIVE CD called UBUNTU can make this easy as we don't install Ubuntu or know it's Linux.

Free, GUI, done.
Bob

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Answer
Booting From An XP CD, You Can Load The Recovery Console
by Forum moderator Aug 23, 2011 4:37AM PDT

...which would then allow you to reach the Recovery Console command prompt. This all should work before Windows is loaded.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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