hal.dll missing AGAIN

Starting last May, when I first got Acronis version 9, I experienced an incredible amount of trouble trying to restore images from DVD. Which resulted in a lot of posts to this forum. One problem that was never really resolved was the "missing/corrupt Windows root/system32/hal.dll" problem. In that case, I lost a working hard drive for several days after having tried a restoration to it, getting the above message as the reason it would not boot. I spent a lot of hours over a couple of days trying to resolve that problem, and finally gave up and reinstalled my old hard drive which was only a couple of days out of date. Then I made yet another image ON THE HARD DRIVE, and for some reason was unable to restore this image to the new hard drive and get it working again. Though I never got anything to work from DVD if I remember correctly.

Then I kind of forgot about Acronis as far as using it, though I would check in on the forum here from time to time and read. Finally, I became convinced that external hard drives and spare internal hard drives for testing restorations was the answer. The only folks who did not seem to have a lot of difficulty were those who were not regularly using DVD's. Anyway, the price was right so I bought A Western Digital My Book external hard drive and a Western Digital 250 GB SATA internal. On special each of these was only about 80 bucks each, so I said "what the heck". All of a sudden I am making Acronis images with great ease to my external hard drive. Each one gets made without any hassle, and I get a message saying that everything was just fine. I am still breaking them up into 1.4 GB blocks for potential future copies to DVD -- just for security purposes. Then I got a SATA control card and installed it, and installed the Western Digital internal hard drive. I booted up and the computer showed all drives functioning. Once I got all new drives and cards installed, I made a new Acronis bootable CD. Both within Windows, and booted from this CD I was able to view the Acronis images from the external hard drive, restore individual files from them, mount the images and copy files from the mounted image to my hard drive. Everything seemed extremely hunky-dory. So then, from within the Acronis CD, I chose recovery and carefully follow the instructions for restoration from my original functioning Seagate hard drive to the newer larger Western Digital SATA drive. Everything seemed to go very smoothly, and I got a message at the end that the operation had been completed successfully. By the way, I validated the image when it was made and instructed the software to validate the image during the restoration. Attempted to boot to the Western Digital, and got that good old message "missing or corrupt Windows root/system 32/hal.dll"!

What in the world is the deal with this? At least this time no damage was done, since I was able to do a trial to an "extra" internal hard drive. But I'm pretty sure from reading this that there is a large number of regular posters to this forum that make images and restore them all the time without any problems. I just don't seem to have any luck with this however. Then I attempted (I believe within Windows after booted up with the original drive) to do a clone disk, and that failed also. I got the same message about the corrupted file. Since it took me about an hour and a half to make an image with validation, and a similar amount of time to attempt the restore, I just used the software that had come with the Western Digital internal drive to "copy files" from Seagate to Western Digital. I got a message that some files had not been correctly copied, to defrag and to run CHKDSK on the source drive. Which I did, ran the "copy files" again, and then the Western Digital booted up just fine.

I know I had defragged and run CHKDSK before making the original images to the external hard drive, but I can't remember for certain if I did this right before I made the last image. So I'm getting ready to try this again, just to know that I can get this Acronis software to work for restoration purposes. Do you guys defrag and run CHKDSK immediately before you make images? Do you think this (not running CHKDSK immediately before imaging) could be the reason for this corrupt or missing file? Could dividing the file up into smaller segments cause this? Do you have any advice/suggestions about what I could be doing that would cause this insanity producing message? I really was not expecting this message when restoring from the external hard drive. Especially when Acronis gave me messages during the making of the image and after the restoration that everything was fine, and apparently "validation" had been passed.
Thanks in advance
Bill

 

Are you sure that your BIOS is set to boot from the 'test' drive?
I've got an ASUS MB that requires the boot drive be specified in the BIOS. [Even though the setting in BIOS is supposed to be the order of looking for bootable drives, it doesn't look past the first one on the list]

 

Jelenko, thanks for the response. Yep, I infact had to change the boot order in the bios. But the error message is regarding a corrupted/missing hal.dll file.
Bill

 

Ah. The reason I mention it is I've gotten the same error message when BIOS is set to the wrong drive.

Since you've consistently gotten this error message, I'm thinking it must [or, at least, probably] be something with your hardware set up.

Since Acronis makes an image of the drive, you know the file is there.

Another possibility - is there any chance the restored drive is being assigned a drive letter different than the original?

 

Perhaps I missed this above but one thing that has been posted on the forum is that
when restoring to a new drive resulting in two identical system drives, you do not want Windows to see two identical drives (iinitially).
One of system drives must be disabled either by removing the data cable or disabled in bios before the first bootup after restoring. Then, after the new drive is recognized with correct drive letters, etc, then you can connect the second identical drive and new higher drive letters will be assigned. This also means that the restore function should occur from the Recovery CD.

If you're looking for a solution outside of TrueImage, this Fred Langa article discusses using the XP rebuild function.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=185301251

 

corinthian,

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=130

Do you have a boot.ini ARC path conflict? What is the partition number in the boot.ini of your functioning main HD? If it's "2" then your restored image won't boot and you will see the hal.dll error. Could you look in Disk Management and let us know if there is a partition in front of your C: drive partition. eg a Dell Diagnostic partition. This will cause the boot.ini in WinXP to reference partition 2. But when you restore the image to another HD the boot.ini needs to be edited to reference partition 1 as WinXP is now on partition 1. ie no Dell partition.

Happened to me with a Dell. Easy to fix.

 

Thank you all for your help. I think I have answered my question regarding "it is a defrag/CHKDSK required prior to making an image". Apparently not, even though I had to do this in order to get the Western Digital software to work in order to get me a bootable new hard drive because some files failed to get copied the first time. A defrag/CHKDSK solve that problem and got the disk working fine. So then I went back to the original source disk, did a brand-new defrag/CHKDSK and immediately created the image. Restored the image to the Western Digital disk, and got the same "hal.dll is missing" message. So that was not the problem.

Jelenko, yes I think you're right -- it seems pretty reasonable that the file is there and uncorrupted on the original source drive which is still functioning perfectly. And it also seems reasonable that Acronis is copying the file since it makes an image of the drive. But still, the consistent message that the file is missing or corrupted.

Grover, I thought your post had possibly solved my problem more or less inadvertently. Though I can't really do anything with the Fred Langa article link you provided, since I don't have a Windows XP disk. I only have a recovery partition that is part of the original hard drive, and though this seems to be functioning -- I'm not at all really sure how to use it in conjunction with instructions for using a Windows XP installation disk. However, your thoughts regarding making sure that one of the system drives are disabled before the first boot up after restoring got me to thinking. Even though trying this did not work, it suddenly occurred to me that I was misreading (possibly) the directions within Acronis. Because when I tried to restore with the source drive disconnected, when I got to the part about "MBR", I then had to select a drive disk MBR "that you want to recover". I had been reading this as has asking me which MBR from a source drive did it want me to recover to the new drive. One of the selections was the original source drive, and I had been choosing this. But what this drive disabled, the source drive was no longer a selection. So it now occurred to me that what it was really asking me was what drive that I want to "recover TO", not "from". Could this be the correct way to go? Anyway, I gave it a try in a new restore action. I had high hopes, but no luck. Now I get a new message which says "MBR error -- press a key". Pressing enter only gets the same message repeated. So no luck. Any thoughts on this?

Brian, I was just about to once again give up on Acronis and repeat using the Western Digital "set up this drive" software that worked several tries back, when I read your post about a possible boot.ini conflict. This is something I need to look into first, if I can figure out exactly how to do it. Okay so I'm looking in disk management on the original source and functioning main HD. I see that this drive is called the C: drive and also disk 0 and has a status of "healthy (system)". Then it shows for the Western Digital drive that I have attempted restoration to: "D: drive -- disc 1 -- healthy (active)". Now this is a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion a324x, and it has a recovery partition, and it is listed on disk 0 as "I:" drive. This same partition which has been restored to the new Western Digital is listed as "G:" drive. Maybe I need to reboot after disconnecting the Western Digital, and see how this reads, just look for any confusion with all the labeling of these various disks. But do you see any hints in what the disk management shows? You say it's easy to fix. But I don't have a Dell. For that matter, is there anything here that needs fixing?

Acronis tech support: Help! In any ideas from you guys as to why Acronis restore just won't work for me and keeps giving me these Hal.dll and now "MBR error" messages? It's just a great mystery to me why Acronis restore will not work for me, even though I can restore individual files from these images, or mount the images and copy files. Particularly when these images have been validated by Acronis immediately after the images made, and again before an attempt to restore the image.
Thanks
Bill

 

Brian: OK, just for kicks I disconnected the new Western Digital SATA drives, and rebooted. Disk management now shows pretty much the same as it did before, the main boot drive is C: and the recovery console is I: and both were on disk 0. And that's all this listed except for the CD-ROMs. This is how disk management shows the original sources Seagate hard drive, the one I have attempted oh so many times to restore to the new Western Digital SATA drive, but with the SATA drive disconnected for the moment. So it looks like when both drives are attached, when I am booting from the Seagate (the only one I can boot from after a restore) that the Seagate is being called disk 0 And is listed is C: and the Western Digital ,when connected, is listed as D: and disk 1(With the Seagate original still showing as C: and disk 0. Do you see any problems from this information?
Bill

 

For the heck of it, I tried once again a disk clone. For reasons unknown this works just fine this time. Perhaps it's because before I booted up after cloning I disconnected the source drive. I can't remember if I did that on my first attempt after a clone following the first failed restore. Now just for information regarding what was already discussed, with the source drive removed and the new clone drive booted, and disk management it shows exactly as it did on the source drive prior to the clone. That is disk 0 with a healthy (system) C: volume, and a recovery volume which has the letter I: -- both on disk 0 which is the only disk.

But this simply increases the mystery to me. If the original source disk will clone with Acronis from Seagate to Western Digital so flawlessly and easily, why can't an Acronis image of that same source drive be restored to the same destination drive without this hal.dll corruption error message or the "MBR error -- press a key" message.

And I'm still not sure of the correct method for restoring MBR. When it comes time after choosing to restore MBR (following the question "do you want to restore another partition/disk") to choose a disk MBR "you want to recover", if both drives are connected and both drives show -- do I pick the source drive (in order to recover that source MBR to the destination drive?) Or do I pick the destination drive in order to -- so to speak -- RESTORE THE DESTINATION DRIVE'S MBR with the MBR from the source?

But more importantly for now -- why can't I restore an image of the same source disk to the same destination disk that I can clone from and to? Am I the only one that has this problem with Acronis? Does it have anything to do with either mass merchandiser purchased PCs that only have restoration partitions on their drives rather than a separately available Windows XP installation disk? Anything to do with going from PATA to a SATA drives? Anything to do with which disk I am choosing in order to recover the MBR?

This is really quite maddening. Considering that I've been trying to restore an image on and off since May! And considering that I can clone successfully, or using an image Acronis has made I can restore from it and mount the image doing various hard disk related tasks from the mounted image with no problem. You would think that would indicate that the image was A-OK. But it is impossible to restore from it, the main thing I want Acronis for.
Thanks
Bill

 

Bill,

You don't get hal.dll problems with cloning unless you clone individual partitions which I don't think TI does.

Could you let me know the partition number in your boot.ini. Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced tab. In Startup and Recovery, click Settings. On the Startup and Recovery window, click Edit. Now you can see your boot.ini.

This is mine.

My Partition Number is (2). What is yours? If you have the HD which doesn't boot could you install it in your computer and boot to your BartPE CD. (If it's a plain BartPE rather than a ReatogoXPE, look for the boot.ini in the root of the C drive using the A43 program.) Then look at the boot.ini and let me know the partition number. Don't bother doing this if you are uncertain of what to do. The boot.ini partition number of your working Operating System is what is really needed.

In Disk Management, do you have the C drive first in the graphic followed by the I drive or is the I drive first? How large is the I drive (MB) and is it a Primary FAT partition? Do you have a floppy drive?

 

Hi Brian. Okay, can I get this info from the disk clone that I have just made, or do I need to boot back up with the original source drive? For the moment, using the new Western Digital drive under clone conditions, this file shows:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

So, it looks like my partition number is (2). It looks very much like your file to me except I've got something tagged on the end of it you don't have about the recovery console. Now mind you, I have not connected the spare original source drive backup yet as a slave/ spare drive. But my understanding is, as a clone, this file should be showing pretty much the same thing as it showed on the original source drive.

I don't have Bart PE -- I have been unable to install that. Or actually, I had Bart PE, but when I would try to run Acronis in Bart PE I would get a message about wrong serial number and I needed to reinstall the program. I couldn't get an answer on how to solve this problem, or I think an answer I did get required me to have a Windows XP installation disk, so I had to give up. Anyway, you say what is important is the boot.ini partition number on my working operating system. So the above is the file from the currently operating system that was cloned from the original source drive wish I had been unable to restore.

In disk management, for disk 0, the I drive is first (24 GB fat 32 BASIC), followed by unallocated 10.75 GB, followed by C: (system) 60 GB, followed by unallocated again 138 GB. Then below that for disk number one is listed my external hard drive. Again, all of this is on the functioning cloned disk that I am able to boot. I assume this is all identical to what was on my source disk which is also still bootable.

I don't see anything about "primary" drives, all I see is that C.: is listed as "system", and up above where all partitions are listed, under the column "type", all hard drives are listed as "basic". I don't see primary listed anywhere in disk management, although it seems to me one of these drives must be primary. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?

Let me know if I need to boot up that other disk, I'll be glad to do it. Thanks to you and everybody else is trying to help me!
Thanks
Bill

 

I attempted a screen shot upload of diskmanagement, but I'm not sure how to do it.

 

Bill,

We'll have this beaten shortly. The arrangement of partitions on your Seagate is the problem. When you restore the image to the WD the boot.ini needs to be different. It needs to be

[boot loader]
timeout=5
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 /NoExecute=OptIn

This is because it's now partition (1) on the WD HD and there is no Recovery partition. You didn't mention if you had a floppy drive. Let's assume that you do. Download editBINI from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html
The instructions are in the file. Basically you copy editbini.exe to a Windows boot floppy, boot to the floppy and type editbini at the A prompt. Then edit boot.ini to what I have above.

If you have had the WD SATA HD in the computer at the same time as the Seagate then there could be drive letter problems. If that's the case I'd remove the Seagate and install the WD SATA. Again restore the image and its MBR from the external HD. Use editBINI and the WinXP should boot.

 

Hey, I think I'm confused with WD/ Seagate. Which is which? Your screenshot shows a WD 250 GB. I thought it was the one that didn't boot. Could you go through them again.

Is the WD in your Disk Management screenshot the clone of your original Seagate?

Just noticed that it is. So we'll need to make some changes before the restore.

 

Yes, I'll be back. Grand child's soccer game!
Bill

 

Bill, enjoy the game.

Could I just make it clear in my mind what you want to accomplish. Do you want to only restore the C drive image of your Seagate HD to the WD SATA HD? No other partitions will be on the WD, just the C drive?

How large is the original Seagate HD?

Do you have a floppy drive?

Do you have partitioning software? Acronis Disk Director Suite or Partition Magic?

I'm just trying to find the easiest way for you to get around this boot.ini problem. I have a few ideas.

 

Okay Brian, I'm back for a little while. Thanks for hanging in there with me to try and get this solved. I'm behind several post of yours that I need to answer.
1: yes I do have a floppy drive.
2: in a minute I will try to download that terabyte Unlimited
3: I have had the SATA drive in the computer at the same time as the Seagate PATA drive.
But as of right now, the Seagate is disconnected and only a Western Digital SATA drive is hooked up and running (after the clone of the Seagate to the Western Digital)
4:Okay, I'm confused on when to use editbini? Do I reinstall the Seagate, (which is still fully bootable) then run that terabyte program and do the editing, then create a new image and restore this? And this should make the Seagate image restorable to the Western Digital? Or is there another way I should do this?

Answers to the next post from Brian: yes, the screenshot is of the Western Digital. It has been bootable and functioning fully since a successful clone disk from the Seagate. But the main reason I bought the additional internal drive along with the external drive was in order to be able to keep a current image for restoration purposes. So although I have been able to do a disk clone, my main goal is to be able to restore images that I have stored on the external hard drive -- and maybe later even from DVD for true emergencies. If the Western Digital seems to be a little faster than the Seagate, then I will probably use it as my main drive. But so far I can't really tell that it is, and it is noisier and hotter than the Seagate, so I may end up using it as primarily storage or primarily for test restoring images. But it doesn't matter, I can use either drive as the main drive, I just want to have a drive that I can use to test an image that I have made for restoration purposes. So that I can know that it is working before I really need it. So yes, I could not boot the Western Digital after a restoration from the Seagate. It is only bootable now because I was able to do that by way of disk cloning.

Response to the next post from Brian: 1: I want to be able to restore the entire disk image of the Seagate (or what ever drive is not the primary drive) to the Western Digital in order to test images that I have made, so that I can have confidence that I can restore in a true emergency. And confidence that the images will work. But assuming I keep using the Western Digital as the main Windows bootable hard drive, then actually I will mostly be restoring images (for testing purposes) to the Seagate. But it could just as well be vice versa. Until I can prove to myself that the larger Western Digital is superior in some way to the smaller Seagate -- enough to make up for its increased noise and increase heat -- then I could just as well use the Seagate is the main drive. It doesn't matter, I just want to have one drive primarily for testing images stored on the external drive or possibly on DVD.

The original Seagate is 120 GB -- I was only occupying about 20 GB of it. I do have a floppy drive. I don't have any partitioning software unless the software that came with the Western Digital can possibly be used for partitioning purposes, and a war to what ever degree I can use the true image nine home Acronis software for resizing, etc. And whatever capabilities Windows has for partitioning would disk management or what ever, if any.

So that's it, I think I'm caught up now. I'll go into a to download that file now and get it working (the terabyte).

 

Bill, I'll answer this in bursts as I'm entertaining the kids at present but we will beat this and make your restores work.

The Seagate is your main HD so don't do anything to it. editBINI is run on the WD after you have restored the image and received the hal.dll error.

I understand that this restore to the WD is for test purposes.

OK. Let's start. Remove the WD HD and install your Seagate. Boot to it and make sure all is OK. Shutdown and install the WD to your computer as well and make sure both are recognized in the BIOS. Boot to Windows which will be the Seagate C drive. We definitely DON'T want to boot to the SATA HD. Disconnect the external HD before booting and leave it disconnected.

Now look in Disk Management. Disk 1 will be your WD and the partition drive letters will have changed from your screenshot above. Delete all partitions on Disk 1, the WD 250 GB HD. It should all be Unallocated Space. Now shutdown, remove the Seagate and make sure the WD is connected to a SATA port that is bootable. Check the BIOS that all is OK.

Note, we haven't changed anything on your Seagate HD.

Now connect your external HD and boot to the Acronis CD. Restore the image, which I gather is stored on your external HD, to the WD HD. Restore the MBR too. Shutdown. Disconnect the external HD (gets rid of confusion). Start the computer and you should see the hal.dll error. Shutdown and boot to the floppy and edit boot.ini. Hopefully it will now boot to Windows. Ask questions if it's confusing. I want to see this work.

 

Brian, a quick question or two on the editing of boot.ini.
One: apparently this cannot be done from within Windows, as when I pull up the boot.ini file that I posted a copy of? So I must edit this from a bootable disk made with terabyte?

2: I have actually been trying to restore two partitions. The two partitions showing in the screenshot of disk management are the two that I have actually been trying to restore, it's just that they are in apparently the wrong order, with I: being listed first (the recovery partition), and C.: being listed second (actually third, since it follows some on allocated space) That is one disk which included the main C: drive partition plus what was originally called D: partition which was the recovery console. Somehow or another this got renamed I:. Anyway, my goal from the beginning was to restore the entire disk including both partitions.

So even though I am dealing with two partitions, both of which need to be restored, you are saying that I should change this boot.ini file and change both places in the boot.ini where it says partition (2) to read partition (1)? Does this get rid of one of the partitions during imaging and restoring, or does it just change the order in which they will be listed -- as in disk management -- so that C: is listed first before I:?
Thanks --
Bill
Oops! I see that you have posted just a couple of minutes prior to this post! I'll read that now- enjoy your entertaining. Take your time and help me at your convenience- thanks much! I'm probably going to have to finish this tomorrow also- I'm running out of time and will soon have to call it a night in order to get readsy for wok tomorrow.

 

Yes, you can edit boot.ini from the file you saw earlier. But that isn't going to work and could stop your Seagate from booting.

So you have two images? That makes it easier.

OK. Do everything as above but when you come to restore, do the Recovery partition first and then the C drive partition. This will put the C drive as partition 2 on the WD and you shouldn't get the hal.dll error. Forget the unallocated space between the two partitions on the Seagate. That shouldn't matter.

More questions?

 

No doubt, more questions. This is all brand new to me! LOL! Two images? I'm not sure what you mean. I have made an image of the one hard drive (seagate) which had two partitions on the on that hard drive, originally c and d, now for some reason c and I.
Bil

 

Brian, I have to call it an evening now. But I'll be back at it hard tomorrow if you will be gracious enough to hang in here with me! Anyway, I actually managed to make an MS -- DOS boot disk, copied editbini to it, and actually got the program to work. But I haven't done any of the editing yet, I plan to try to follow your instructions tomorrow. Thanks again.
Later
Bill

 

You have imaged differently from what I do. I do partition images and you have done a disk image. That's OK. Most people do it your way.

Same instructions. Restore that image and the MBR. After the hal.dll error use editBINI and if it says Partition (2) make it (1). In both places in the boot. ini. If it says (1) make it (2). Restoring images can change the boot.ini at times.

 

When I run editbini my first screen is Select which HD. HD 0 or HD 1. You might not see this screen as you will be booting with only one HD.
My second screen is the Partition table.

MBR Entry 0..... partition (01)......
MBR Entry 1......partition (02)......
etc

Select the MBR Entry that corresponds to your WinXP and press Enter. The partition number above should be the same as the boot.ini but I suspect yours will be different.
Edit the two partition numbers on the boot.ini screen and press F10 to Save and Exit. Now, I wouldn't delete that final line....C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons .......We can think about its function later.

 

Hi Brian, I'm home from work now and I am at this stage of restoring once again, with only the Western Digital connected -- and of course the external hard drive which has the image. I know this sounds pretty basic at this stage of the game, but does it matter during restoration which order of the partitions you pick to be restored? In other words, do we select MBR last after selecting the Main boot drive for restoration? Does it matter?

Also, in the manual for true image nine home, right after it discusses resizing partitions during restoration, in section 6.3 . 9, it mentions a signing drive letters to a restore partition when using Acronis true image home 9 in Windows XP. It says there is a drop down list to choose from. I don't see any such list. Should it be there?

Bill