Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum
The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.

Boot.ini/hal.dll shenanigans

ChenChen Registered User regular
edited August 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
Funny story. I suddenly decided on a whim to delete some IE8 toolbar and to my confusion all my Start Menu shortcuts disappeared. They actually weren't physically in documents and settings anymore. So I restarted and to my surprise it couldn't even boot, telling me \system32\hal.dll is missing. Well, shit. I don't feel like installing XP again, so I'm hoping the recovery console can restore whatever file is damaged.

The problem is I'm not sure what is exactly causing the boot failure. It could be boot.ini or hal.dll, but it could also be the partition boot sector or the actual hard drive. I tried 'bootconfig /rebuild', but I don't know what to type in Enter Load Identifier and Enter OS Load options. Tried 'expand e:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll', but it failed.

Should I just perform a repair installation and be done with it?

V0Gug2h.png
Chen on

Posts

  • kevbotkevbot Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Had this happen to a few users at work the other day... I followed the instructions here:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330184

    which worked perfectly. "Load Identifier" is just the name of your OS, being "Microsoft Windows XP Home" or "Microsoft Windows XP Professional". For "Load Options", just type "/fastdetect", as the Microsoft help page says. Once I'd done all that, I just restarted without the install CD and everything worked fine again.

    kevbot on
    Your music is bad, and you should feel bad!
  • ChenChen Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Thanks! It worked miraculously. Though I wonder how deleting a non-system file fucked up everything including Start Menu.

    Chen on
    V0Gug2h.png
  • ChenChen Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Okay, now I can't load my profile upon startup. Something's definitely fishy here...

    Chen on
    V0Gug2h.png
  • kevbotkevbot Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    The cause of the missing boot.ini for us was the ask.com toolbar updater that was installed along with netbeans (or something). I just went into the services manager (right click My Computer, Manage, Services and Applications, Services) found AskUpdate and disabled it. The boot.ini file remained through startup after that. Sort of makes one wonder if they bothered with any testing before pushing out that updater, but who knows?

    If your profile is messed up then you might have something else going on. Try some industrial strength anti-virus / anti-spyware... I suggest Spybot Search and Destroy along with ESET NOD32.

    kevbot on
    Your music is bad, and you should feel bad!
Sign In or Register to comment.
Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum