laptop wont boot

lou47lee

Hope someone can help, was online earlier 2 day fine when a blue screen came up and shut it down, now when I turn it on it is not booting at all and when I press f11 it just goes 2 a light blue screen and does nothing I then have 2 hold the on/ off button 2 come out leave it a few minutes and then turn on again and now it is just a black screen with a small lines flashing in the top corner HELP

closed

hold on off for 10 seconds

lou47lee

Ok done that black screen has come up pushed last known good config and it says windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the above file... HELP

macman

Your OS is probably corrupted, do you have a recovery disk or original OS disk?

Browntoa

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm

Cause ( for the links below to work you need to go to the pcsupport web site and click)

Causes of the "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error include, naturally, a damaged hal.dll DLL file or a hal.dll file that has been deleted or moved from its intended location.
Additional causes may include a damaged or missing boot.ini file or possibly a physically damaged hard drive.
Resolution

1. Restart the PC. The hal.dll error could be a fluke.
2. Check for proper boot order in BIOS. You might see the hal.dll error if the boot order in BIOS is first looking at a hard drive other than your main hard drive.
   
   Note: If you've recently changed your boot order or recently flashed your BIOS, this may be what's causing your problem.
3. Run Windows XP System Restore from a command prompt. If this doesn't work or you're receiving the hal.dll error message before you're able to complete this process, move on to the next step.
4. Repair or replace the boot.ini file. This will work if the cause of the problem is actually Windows XP's boot.ini file and not the hal.dll file, which is often times the case.
   
   Note: If repairing the boot.ini does correct the hal.dll issue but the problem reappears after a reboot and you've recently installed Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP, uninstall IE8. In this specific situation, IE8 could be the root cause of your hal.dll problem.
5. Write a new partition boot sector to the Windows XP system partition. If the partition boot sector has become corrupt or isn't properly configured, you may receive the hal.dll error.
6. Recover data from any bad sectors on your hard drive. If the physical part of your hard drive that stores any part of the hal.dll file has been damaged, you're likely to see errors like this.
7. Restore the hal.dll file from the Windows XP CD. If the hal.dll file is truly the cause of the problem, restoring it from the original Windows XP CD may do the trick.
8. Perform a repair installation of Windows XP. This type of installation should replace any missing or corrupt files. Continue troubleshooting if this does not resolve the issue.
9. Perform a clean installation of Windows XP. This type of installation will completely remove Windows XP from your PC and install it again from scratch.
   
   Note: While this will almost certainly resolve any hal.dll errors, it is a time consuming process due to the fact that all of your data must be backed up and then later restored.
   
   Important: If you can't gain access to your files to back them up, you should understand that you will lose them all if you continue with a clean installation of Windows XP.
10. Test the hard drive. If all else has failed, including the clean installation from the last step, you're most likely facing a hardware issue with your hard drive but you'll want to test it to be sure.
    
    If the drive fails any of your tests, replace the hard drive and then complete a "new" installation of Windows XP.

lou47lee

Thanks very much 4 all ur advice but I haven't a clue how 2 do any of it lol, think I will take it in 2 my local repair shop and get them 2 sort it out 4 me, but thanks anyways really appreciate ur help

closed

If you don't need any data, you could probably fix it by using the factory restore partition or windows disc, if you do need data, you could buy a cheap 2.5" usb-hard disk caddy first to recover it.