I got the "missing hal.dll" error this afternoon, so I tried a repair install of XP Pro to fix it. After the repair, the system automatically reboots every time during the Windows XP splash screen, meaning I never actually can boot up all the way. There is an instantaneous flash of a BSOD before it reboots, but it's not up long enough for me to read the error.

It boots into Safe Mode with no issues. Is there a way for me to slow the boot down so I can read the error on the BSOD? Or how else can I diagnose this?

can't you turn on boot logging be pressing f8 or something like that?

-David

Unless you changed your software recently (installed something - an update or anything) -- its probly dead hardware. Maybe a hard drive going bad.

Buy a new laptop and try to salvage the data from the old drive...

It's not a laptop, it's a desktop. I figure the drive is going bad, but I'd like to get the data off. I guess I'll just use Safe Mode to do so and then install a new hard drive.

If you can boot into the GUI in safe mode you can stop the auto-reboot.

Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced tab and then the settings button in the Startup and Recovery section. Uncheck the box for auto reboot. Also, you can look in event viewer after it boots and you should see an event logged with the BSoD error code(s).

Sometimes a piece of software will hose the boot.ini file and misdirect Windows but everytime I've ever seen this error come up it's due to drive corruption/death. It may NOT be the hard drive. Motherboard instability would cause this as well. Best bet would be to yank the hard drive, connect it to another computer that's known working and get the data off. If the drive is failing, everything you do is further diminishing the chance you'll successfully be able to read your data.

Thanks for the advice. Mysteriously, I was able to boot normally on this try. I'm taking the opportunity to back up everything of importance before I do anything else. I'm guessing I need to look into a new hard drive. It's irritating because this drive is just over a year old. Time to call Maxtor.

I would highly recommend you purchase "Spinrite" from grc.com

I had a similar situation where I invested in a lot of time building a desktop, and after a few weeks of use, it would fail to boot up.

I thought it was the hard drive was was ready to buy a new hard drive. But I decided to try out Spinrite, and lo and behold, the hard drive was fine, something had corrupted the OS instead.

I restored to a prior image I had saved using Acronis True Image, and it's been humming along ever since.

The $89 I paid for Spinrite paid for itself, since I didn't waste money to buy a new hard drive. Now I use Spinrite every 2-3 months to do a maintenance run on my hard drives, and it even fixed a hard drive that over-heated in a USB enclosure which works just fine now.

So do yourself a favor and try out the software to see if it really is the hard drive...

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Hard drive are so cheap and I replace mine every couple of years. I would image the drive with Acronis onto a new 3.5" drive (or onto a 2.5" drive for a backup) and use it in the computer.

MisterNice

Wow that seems like such a waste. I've yet to have a desktop hard drive die on me.

I've had a laptop (Sony Vaio) hard drive go dead on me though. Spinrite salvaged the data off that dying hard drive for me so I was very happy.

Spinrite will do preventive maintenance and diagnosis on hard drives to warn you of hard drive failures, so it's great for the wallet and for the environment.

Never had a hard drive fail ... and this is going back to 1985.

Since I use only a laptop, and since I take it on airplanes, I have a reason to back up about 6 - 8 times a year. Glad. I had the whole kit stolen about a year ago and was just sooo happy to have everything backed-up at home.

Anyway you look at it, backing up is a good thing.

Were you able to troubleshoot booting using the logged boot?

I think if you press F8 during boot, I believe one of the options is to log everything that happens during the windows boot process. So if it fails, and you can boot into safe mode, the log should still be there and you can see where it died.

-David