HAL.DLL misery update

Well, after an unbelievable number of wasted hours trying to resolve the "Windows\system 32\Hal .dll is missing or corrupt" message after my first attempt at a restore action from the original disk image made several weeks ago, I finally today pulled off a successful (apparently, so far) restore of a disk image. I finally had to give up on the resolution of the corrupt system 32 file, and simply recopied my old hard drive to the new one, this time using the Seagate software that came with the new Seagate drive. I guess I could say I was feeling a little distrustful of the Acronis software after losing the ability to boot my system for a couple of days. You know the picture of the guy on the opening page of the user's guide, the guy whose head is hanging low because presumably he did not have Acronis software to save him from a system crash? Well I was kind of feeling like that guy, except that I wasn't feeling that way for lack of Acronis software. I was feeling that way because of the many hours of work that resulted from my attempt at restoration, even though all files had been "validated" during the original imaging and prior to restoration.

But anyway, I've been hanging in there trying to get it to work. And since I have now become quite handy at changing out hard drives, and my old hard drive is only a couple of days out of date, I tried it again. I very carefully made a full disk image, verify all files, and then used the old two-step procedure to copy these files to DVD. I tried to restore with the Acronis rescue disk and the DVDs, and got those oh so familiar messages about low quality media, and/or this is not volume 1 please insert volume 1, no -- volume 1 is wrong -- please insert volume 3 -- and finally messages that the image was corrupt. So I canceled that action. I made yet another new full disk image to the hard drive, and tried a restore from the hard drive. Just like I did the first time I tried it when I lost my computer for several days. I clicked "restore", and held my breath waiting for the "cant boot" message. But lo and behold, it actually restored the C: drive and booted right up. So I apparently for the moment have a disk image that works. I don't know what was different about this image compared to the previous one.

So now, I'm just trying to figure out what the secret is for getting these files copied to DVD in a workable fashion? I already split archives at 1492 MB, and there's never any trouble burning to the DVD. It's just that the image will not work, at least not booting from the recovery disk. So I'm wondering, do the DVDs need to be "virgin" disks? Never used before? These are rewritable disk that had data on them (actually, the previous Acronis disk image that caused me so much grief). But I did a full erase on them, and I didn't have any messages that there was any data on the disk. I did not format them with InCD. Should I have? Or is it just that I need a disk that has never been used before? Should I disable Nero InCD? Or is it just that DVDs are just not going to work? This is all using build 3633.

I will appreciate any advice from anybody that is actually managing to copy a usable image to DVD. By the way, I'm using DVD + RW, with lot's of memory available. Recently, I have also been shutting down all of the Windows programs including antivirus and firewalls, and disconnecting from the Internet. I don't know if this had anything to do with me finally being able to make a successful image to hard disk that would work. But it hasn't so far helped with the DVD situation.
Thanks
Bill

 

Hello Bill,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

First of all, please download and install the latest build (3666) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home which is available at the Product Updates section at our web site.

To get access to updates you should create an account then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please also do not forget to create new Acronis Bootable Rescue CD with this latest build.

After that please check the functionality of Acronis True Image within Windows and booting from Rescue CD. If the issues you have described are reproducible and still remain then please let us know about it and we will certainly try to provide you with solutions.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

Thank you Kirill, for the quick response. I'll try that out. It sounds like some folks here have already had trouble with 3666, but I'll try it. Though I still hope to get some suggestions from other users, who are succesfully using DVD, as to what I might be doing wrong. And if I should buy some new DVDs, unused.
Thanks,
Bill