Dell Laptop With A Boot Problem

[hech54]

Loading PBR for Descriptor 2
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
(missing, cannot be found, something like that)

From what I can tell, diagnostics and Recovery Console cannot actually see c:
It appears to see the drive (disc 0 ?) with partitions, but it keeps pointing to drive f:
I believe the only option really available to me is to rebuild/repair the MBR....but with
all of these famous Dell partitions on the drive, I'm assuming this will either kill the windows install
or kill the partitions, rendering any data salvage impossible.

I'm not a computer idiot but I'm certainly no genius either (as you can tell).

I can easily remove the HDD from the laptop and connect it to my PC, but if this was a result of
malware or a virus or something....I don't want to mess up my PC.

Any suggestions in plain English would be greatly appreciated. I've been Googling and it appears my chances
of getting this thing to boot again are pretty slim....to my limited computer-knowledged brain.

It's late here so don't get pissed if I don't reply right away....and thank you for any help you can provide.

Oh....and diagnostics also found "Uncorrectable Data Or Media Is Write Protected" in blocks 4046378 through 4046381.
The HDD is a WD, 160GB(?).

Oh....Windows XP Pro.

[ranchhand]

If you have a retail or OEM OS disk, the easiest and safest thing to do is a repair reinstall of XP. If the Hal file is missing or corrupt, or even if the MBR is corrupted that will fix it without damage to your programs and data. I assume you know the procedure but if you don't post back. That's the great thing about XP, you can do a repair reinstall. MightySoft, in its infinite wisdom, chose to remove that wonderful tool in Vista and W7.
If you don't have an XP Pro disk, there is a site that you can download an ISO of one and then use your key number. Drat, I can't find the link to it, I will keep searching. I think it was My Digital Life that had it, I will check.
You might want to run Seagates Seatools for DOS to check the condition of your drive; if your drive is failing you will want to pull the data off it ASAP.

[papakilo]

1. You can't possibly get a virus/malware from hooking your laptop drive to your PC, unless you:
A. Try and boot from it which won't work. or
B. Try and execute a contaminated program from it.

If you hook it via a USB drive connector, make SURE you turn off auto-run BEFORE connecting it.

2. It sounds like you have a bad drive, connect it to your PC. Try and copy as much of your data as you can. Go out and buy a new drive and reinstall from scratch. If you can't reinstall, go out and buy a new laptop.

[sanlyn]

The cause could be a damaged hal.dll, corrupt boot sector or boot.ini file, damaged HDD. Sometimes running Chkdsk can fix if Win has problems reading bad drive sectors. Some say you can reinstall hal.dll fom the system CD (never worked for me, I think it's a myth). Otherwise, make sure the drive itself hasn't burned up, then reinstall.

Dell laptops kept doing that to me until I stopped buying 'em.

[HarpMaster]

Hi Hech 54,

Although I joined a few years ago, this is my first reply to a post. This is because of a coincidence. I have just in the last hour, sorted out the exact same problem with my desktop!

Hal.Dll missing or corrupt is a hardware problem to do with the motherboard. A friend told me to reset the bios to default, which fixed it temporarily, the best advice he gave me was to replace the battery in the motherboard. After a number of years use, the voltage had worn down and it needed replacing. There wasn't enough power to load the harddrive.

When you boot up the bios will have reset to default.

I've just finished and the computer seems rejuvenated!

Best Wishes..........

[hech54]

Dell laptops kept doing that to me until I stopped buying 'em.

Yea....this is my LAST Western Digital drive.

[sanlyn]

Might not be the drive itself, as WD is a good name. More likely it's the cheap controller chips and weird power management on everything Dell makes. I've repaired Dell machines for over 15 years: I've seen some pretty sloppy engineering from them. They aren't the only offenders, but their QC and reliability are "consistently inconsistent" in my experience.

The again, there's always that one-in-ten-thousand hardware failure from even the best of them.

[hech54]

My WD comment was a joke......just like mindless, knee-jerk Dell bashing is a sport to stupid people.
Get it now?

[sanlyn]

Sorry, hech54. Dell-bashing isn't mindless, knee-jerk, or stupid. Buying one is. But I'm glad they're around -- I've made a lot of $$$ repairing and replacing them. Their line of laptops has been especially profitable.

[hech54]

Hal.Dll missing or corrupt is a hardware problem to do with the motherboard. A friend told me to reset the bios to default, which fixed it temporarily, the best advice he gave me was to replace the battery in the motherboard. After a number of years use, the voltage had worn down and it needed replacing. There wasn't enough power to load the harddrive.

Nope.
Wrong.
I loaded a Paragon backup image(from 2009) of that laptop to a slightly larger HDD and the laptop is functioning perfectly....exactly how it looked back in 2009.....so no...the hal.dll problem has ZERO to do with motherboard or motherboard battery.

[HarpMaster]

I also bought a new, larger HDD and loaded onto it an Acronis image, courtesy of Seagate Disk Wizard, that I made in 2008. It was working perfectly for about a week, while I was bringing everything up-to-date. And then I plugged in my scanner and tried to boot up and got the message hal.dll was missing! The harddrive was not showing in the bios again.

This time I decided to install a new battery in the motherboard. In about half an hour, everything was working perfectly and still is, with the scanner, printer and everything
else plugged in.

Shortly after, I saw your post about the very same problem and decided to take the plunge and make my very first post to try to help. I've learnt a lot from the advice given in posts on Videohelp from people such as yourself.

[hech54]

I also bought a new, larger HDD and loaded onto it an Acronis image, courtesy of Seagate Disk Wizard, that I made in 2008. It was working perfectly for about a week, while I was bringing everything up-to-date. And then I plugged in my scanner and tried to boot up and got the message hal.dll was missing! The harddrive was not showing in the bios again.

This time I decided to install a new battery in the motherboard. In about half an hour, everything was working perfectly and still is, with the scanner, printer and everything
else plugged in.

Shortly after, I saw your post about the very same problem and decided to take the plunge and make my very first post to try to help. I've learnt a lot from the advice given in posts on Videohelp from people such as yourself.

Now you are just, plain LYING.

[HarpMaster]

About what?

What happened with the computer or learning anything from you?

[sanlyn]

A dead battery will not allow the computer to maintain the correct system time while a PC has no other power, among other things, which might have something to do with it. But HarpMaster forgot to mention that replacing the battery also involves manually refreshing the system date/time in the BIOS. But doesn't Windows check that during bootup if the 'puter is connected to a network? I know it's periodically corrected while Windows is running, isn't it?

Beats me. Anyway, the problem seems to have been solved, for whatever reason.

[hech54]

Thanks to TestDisk 6.14 I was able to get my wife's DOWNLOADS folder with many of her .exe files rescued from the "dead" drive. TestDisk cannot seem to see her "My Data" folder.....however my Windows Repair disc can see it BUT....it can only copy one FILE at a time.
GGGrrrrrr.....That's not gonna fly.

Oh....and I used my old Dell desktop to run the Windows Repair Disc CD. The dead HDD did strange things to this computer that I am on now. I had to do a system restore back to last week. That dead HDD won't be attached to this computer ever again.