42 replies to this topic

[Jkc73]

I decided to run sfc /scannow.... this required my OS disk, which I decided to use my OEM winxpsp2 disk for.
after this completed, I rebooted via log off, restart.

No problem yet.

As the system started, the System Configuration Utility appears, I check all services, boot.ini. I change nothing.

Select restart windows. It appears again, it is showing selective startup option, this is common as I have changed settings before.

I check everything again, everything appeared ok, except the boot.ini timeout was set to 3 sec instead of 30 sec, I don't know how much that would matter.

Though in favor of safety I decided to set it to Normal Startup.

I was thinking I could work back from there to stop the services I didn't need running, etc etc..

To my surprise, on the next boot I received the following messages one after the other...

Keyboard failure.
Press any key to boot from CD.....

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.

To remedy the 1st message,
Unplugged all usb devices except the keyboard and mouse.
Booted up computer...this showed the 2nd message.
So I restarted to BIOS,

Changed boot order to..
Seagate ide hdd
Usb CD drive
Sata hdd
Usb Ext hdd

Booted up computer...this showed the 2nd message.

I am now booting from the Seagate 20GB ide hdd.
With both the Samsung hdd(boot) and the ext usb wd hdd unplugged.


Which of the following does it appear to be?

• You have a bad partition or a bad boot record.
• A file system or disk corruption causes the primary boot record, the Hal.dll file, or the Ntoskrnl.exe file to become damaged.
• The Hal.dll and the Ntoskrnl.exe files are mismatched.

............Possible Solutions




As I await a response, I will start plugging drives in, one each at a time,...etc..

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Jkc73]

As I await a response, I will start plugging drives in, one each at a time,...etc..

Ext. 1TB WD hdd is now connected and functioning properly.

2. A file system or disk corruption causes the primary boot record, the Hal.dll file, or the Ntoskrnl.exe file to become damaged.

I have run the chkdsk /r command from windows recovery.

still no joy.


Next course of action.

1. You have a bad partition or a bad boot record.

Repair the master boot record by using the fixmbr command from the Windows XP Recovery Console.

if no joy..

Then...
Start the Recovery Console, and then use the Bootcfg.exe tool to rebuild the Boot.ini file.


Does this sound like the best course of action?

If anyone has any advice or better ideas, I am open to them.

[Doug]

Here are the steps I'd recommend..... Boot with your XP CD in the cd drive. Select 'To repair..' by pressing 'R'. When in the Recovery Console type the following: "copy X:\i386\ntldr C:\" - without the quotes. Where X is the letter of your CD drive and C is the letter of your system drive. Answer “Y” for Yes to overwrite existing file. Press Enter Take the XP CD out of the cd drive and reboot into XP normally If the above has not repaired the problem: Return your XP install CD into the optical drive unit (probably D:\) "copy X:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\" - without the quotes. Where X is the letter of your CD drive and C is the letter of your system drive. Answer “Y” for Yes to overwrite existing file. Press Enter Take the XP CD out of the cd drive and reboot into XP normally If the above does not resolve the problem: • Repeat the instructions above to boot to the recovery console and log on as administrator. • At the command prompt type the following command: • (The example commands assume that C: is your Windows drive. Change the drive letter if appropriate.) ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\BOOT.INI – Press Enter DEL C:\BOOT.INI – Press Enter BOOTCFG /REBUILD FIXBOOT – Press Enter • You will be notified that “ Windows installation was successful • You will then get the following options: • Add installation To Boot list? (Yes, No, All) (type) “y” for yes and press –Enter • Enter Load Identifier: ((type) Microsoft Windows XP Profession (or) Home Edition <-- in your case you will type Home Edition • Enter OS Load Options: (type)/fastdetect - Enter • Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and restart the computer. If the above sequence has not resolved the problem • . Repeat the instructions above to boot to the recovery console and log on as administrator. • At the command prompt type the following command: (The example commands assume that C: is your Windows drive. Change the drive letter if appropriate.) • • (type)chkdsk /r – enter You may be warned that chkdsk cannot be run, due to some files being in use. If you receive this warning, answer “Y” for yes, to allow chkdsk /r to run the next time your machine is booted. Reboot your machine, allowing chkdsk /r to be run. (This may take a long time (more than an hour) When complete, chkdsk /r will automatically reboot your machine normally and the machine should boot into Windows.

[Jkc73]

Here are the steps I'd recommend.....

Boot with your XP CD in the cd drive. Select 'To repair..' by pressing 'R'. When in the Recovery Console type the following:

"copy X:\i386\ntldr C:\" - without the quotes. Where X is the letter of your CD drive and C is the letter of your system drive.
Answer “Y” for Yes to overwrite existing file. Press Enter
Take the XP CD out of the cd drive and reboot into XP normally

If the above has not repaired the problem:

Return your XP install CD into the optical drive unit (probably D:\)

"copy X:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\" - without the quotes. Where X is the letter of your CD drive and C is the letter of your system drive.
Answer “Y” for Yes to overwrite existing file. Press Enter

Take the XP CD out of the cd drive and reboot into XP normally


If the above does not resolve the problem:
• Repeat the instructions above to boot to the recovery console and log on as administrator.
• At the command prompt type the following command:
• (The example commands assume that C: is your Windows drive. Change the drive letter if appropriate.)
ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\BOOT.INI – Press Enter
DEL C:\BOOT.INI – Press Enter
BOOTCFG /REBUILD FIXBOOT – Press Enter
• You will be notified that “ Windows installation was successful
• You will then get the following options:
• Add installation To Boot list? (Yes, No, All) (type) “y” for yes and press –Enter
• Enter Load Identifier: ((type) Microsoft Windows XP Profession (or) Home Edition <-- in your case you will type Home Edition
• Enter OS Load Options: (type)/fastdetect - Enter
• Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and restart the computer.
Made it this far before it could actually boot to the correct installation of windows.
If the above sequence has not resolved the problem
• . Repeat the instructions above to boot to the recovery console and log on as administrator.
• At the command prompt type the following command: (The example commands assume that C: is your Windows drive. Change the drive letter if appropriate.)
•
• (type)chkdsk /r – enter
You may be warned that chkdsk cannot be run, due to some files being in use. If you receive this warning, answer “Y” for yes, to allow chkdsk /r to run the next time your machine is booted.
Reboot your machine, allowing chkdsk /r to be run.
(This may take a long time (more than an hour)
When complete, chkdsk /r will automatically reboot your machine normally and the machine should boot into Windows.

Ok, now with dual option boot, XP home, old restored from image version and a new installed to ide hdd version.

I still have one concern.

As I was going through the steps to label the OS installations, I named the 2nd, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition new

After booting ..."shown above"Made it this far before it could actually boot to the correct installation of windows.

The options displayed these 3...

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
(This version booted correctly, and to drive c: as expected.)

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition new
(This version booted correctly to the new installation of windows.)

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
(This version displayed the error...)

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.

I booted to c: drive, run the system configuration utility, clicked on BOOT.INI tab,
Then I noticed (3)three lines in the [operating systems] I select the 1st and clicked "Check all boot paths". The third one displayed the following message.

It appears that the following line in the BOOT.INI file does not refer to a valid OS.
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS = Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn"
Would you like to remove it from the BOOT.INI file?

Apon selecting yes, then apply, the General Tab option for Normal Startup changes to Selective Startup, and visa versa when selecting the Normal Startup, it replaces the third line in the [operating systems] BOOT.INI file.

I was thinking that this was strange because it doesn't have any effect with the 2 other lines that already exist, why would the third?

Apart from that, it all seems fine at the moment.

Do you recommend to leave the 2 lines the way they are?,
(Both set the same, rdisk(0)/rdisk(1) the difference)
Would you like to see a post of the boot.ini file?

[terry1966]

to me that boot configuration is saying you have 3 windows operating systems installed, 1 on the samsung 1 on the seagate where is the 3rd installed(or as stated points to an invalid os)?? i would unplug the seagate, you don't need it as part of the samsungs boot loader, it is an emergency os for when the samsung fails, and has it's own boot loader on it, so after you've sorted out the problems with the samsung you can connect it later with no problems. make sure the samsung is the first bootable hard drive in the bios again and leave it. i'd also unplug the wd external too, until you've sorted out your problems, now with just the samsung connected i would re-do dougs instructions and see where you are, i think i'd like to see the partition table for the samsung too. don't confuse "drive c" as being just the samsung first partition because it's not, it is the first partition of which ever hard drive and it's os is booted first, so if you boot the seagate drive first, the first partition on that hard drive is "drive c" if you boot the samsung first, the first partition on that hard drive also is "drive c" wouldn't surprise me if it's the seagates boot loader that you have been changing and not the samsungs either, after the changes you made in bios, so after you've fixed the samsungs boot loader, you might need to disconnect all the drives except the seagates and then have to fix that one also. before reconnecting all drives again. don't forget you will have 2 hard drives with their own separate boot loaders on, in bios the samsung is first boot drive, so only that one will be used until/unless it fails then the seagate and it's boot loader will be used. your not setting up a dual boot system(both os the same so pointless) you are creating a system with redundancy, ie. you have an os all ready to boot if anything fails with the main samsung os and drive, the wd is your backup.

Edited by terry1966, 30 January 2011 - 09:31 AM.

[Doug]

What Terry said.

[Jkc73]

to me that boot configuration is saying you have 3 windows operating systems installed, 1 on the samsung 1 on the seagate where is the 3rd installed(or as stated points to an invalid os)??

There is 1 OS installed on the seagate.(new)
1 that was restored to the 80GB partition of the samsung 1TB hdd.
I believe an old install that was copied from the samsung (along with the image backup data) to the external WD 1TB hdd. Though that has not been functional for quite some time, I'm quite surprised it is even still recognised as an OS.

as stated points to an invalid os)??

---------------------------------------------------------------------

i would unplug the seagate, you don't need it as part of the samsungs boot loader, it is an emergency os for when the samsung fails, and has it's own boot loader on it, so after you've sorted out the problems with the samsung you can connect it later with no problems.

make sure the samsung is the first bootable hard drive in the bios again and leave it.

i'd also unplug the wd external too, until you've sorted out your problems, now with just the samsung connected i would re-do dougs instructions and see where you are, i think i'd like to see the partition table for the samsung too.

So far I have finished rebuilding/creating a new boot.ini file, though after restarting I find the option to boot to 2 OS's is still available.

• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

These 2 both boot to the same drive.
They have to, as I only have the samsung installed, and it is set as the 1st boot drive in BIOS and has only 1 OS installed.
As I enter windows, I check out the system configuration utility, click on BOOT.INI tab, there are two lines in the [operating systems], both exactly the same.

• Do I need to remove one?
• How do I remove one?
• Why did this happen?

Thanks for your continued support.

[Jkc73]

Here is a copy of the boot.ini file.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

It all seems to fine.
I only have 1 hdd and 1 OS(win xp) installed.

I am still experiencing the options of 2 OS's installed.

[terry1966]

should be easy enough just to manually edit the boot loader and delete the 2nd option, but not using a windows system so can't offer advice on how to go about it.

but this should tell you how. :- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022

[Jkc73]

Thanks Terry.

I already got to that, everything is running fine.

Sorry I didn't reply after I had the fix. I wanted to run it for a few boots and I just finished an ESET online scan.

To my surprise, it came up with a few possible nasties that I have to investigate.

I will add the additional hard disks one by one and see how things pan out after I have sorted the results of the ESET online scan.

Thanks again for your help, Terry & Doug.

[terry1966]

if that drive is infected wouldn't surprise me if the other 2 are also, so be careful when you add them back.

[Jkc73]

so far they are just pup's that I required temporarily. So I will scan all drives as I add each drive, to see if one has an individual infection. I may just add the drives, and boot from a cd to scan them. Thanks again.

[Jkc73]

MBAM, Spybot S&D & avast find nothing, I'm feeling good so far. I am yet to check for any deeper infection. If I feel the need I will take it to the experts. I'm just a trainee.

Edited by Jkc73, 01 February 2011 - 11:23 AM.