missing or corupt hal.dll

After restoring an image of a perfect installation of winXP to a new hard drive and installing that in the old machine I get an error that it can't boot because of a missing or corrupt HAL.DLL file. I have even replaced that file using the XP repair console and the machine refuses to boot from that drive.

Help, this is about the 5th time this process has failed and I haven't got the time to reinstall from scratch, this is the reason I bought True Image in the first place!

Thanks for any help!
Gill

 

If you're not using the latest ver/build, that is what will be suggested to you.

By any chance are the drives of vastly different sizes?

 

If I understand this correctly, an image was taken of WinXP OS on computer A, and then this image was restored to a new HD on computer B.

If this is correct, then I see two things wrong.

Firstly what was done is not legal. Effectively what you are trying to do is to copy WinXP from one computer to another.

Secondly this will not work because you are trying to copy the OS from one computer to a second computer.

If on the other hand you are restoring an OS image to a new drive on the same computer and it is not working for you, I would suggest you try migrating your OS from the old drive to the new drive by using the CLONE feature of Acronis True Image.

 

gillbrooks,

I've seen this several times and it's usually due to an incorrect boot.ini. The easiest way to fix this is to directly edit the boot.ini in BartPE. There are several other ways to edit the boot.ini.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

 

it is from and to the same machine, I had made an image of the original OS incase of hard drive failure and it failed!

I just downloaded the lastest patch and will install it, but I really wanted my image to do what it is supposed to and restore the new drive to exactly what the old drive was like at the time of the image creation!

I don't think it as simple as a boot.ini problem but will read the ini file to see.

Thanks everyone for your input!
Gill

 

i just found this solution in the Langa newsletter. hope it helps.

 

I never get as far as being able to opt for safe mode or anything [why I suspect it is deeper than the boot.ini] it just freezes on a black screen with the error about HAL

Mahalo though [Hawaiian for thanks]

 

Hello gillbrooks,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please make sure that you use the latest build (3567) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please remember that in order to clone or migrate your Windows system to a different hardware, you should first prepare Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep). Please take a look at this FAQ article.

We would recommend you to create images when your PC is booted from Acronis True Image Bootable Rescue CD, since there is no operating system or any other applications running in this case and you can avoid that problem.

Please also take a look at this Mcrosoft Knowledge Base article describing the possible reasons and resolutions for missing or corrupt HAL.DLL file problem.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Tatyana,
Thanks for your advice, especially the referral to the MS sysprep tool. I was unaware of its existence and it looks to be most helpful.

With Aloha
Gill

 

Gill,

You DON'T need Sysprep if you are cloning/image restoring to the same computer.
Was your boot.ini incorrect?

 

Don't be surprised if none of the suggestions in the MS article work for you. I've come across that error and the file was, in fact, NOT missing. The error seems to happen because of a large difference in hard drive sizes. How large is large ... I don't know, nor did I waste any more time trying to find out.

 

I had this problem when using drive image 7 to move my OS over to a larger hard drive. It turns out that Dell puts a utility partition ahead of the OS
so in copying the OS onto the new drive, you have to modify the boot.ini
on the new drive.

on the old HD with the utility partition the boot loader reads
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS...

Since the new HD has no utility partition, the OS is the first partition and the boot loader should be changed to
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS...

I was able to modify the boot.ini by hooking the new HD to a USB case and
using another XP system to access the drive.