PLEASE HELP SOON! Boot problem!

[Makaveli]

I was messing around with some boot screen program, and didnt like it, so when i uninstalled it and rebooted i now get an error message and cant boot!! I cant do system restore for some reason because it gives me an error saying it couldnt find a log or something!

The error is

"Windows could no boot because file was missing or corrupt windows root\system32/hal.dll

Please install a new copy of this file..



Now, how do I go about doing this!? PLease help fast! (1:07am and i cant sleep till this is off my mind!)


Cant boot into safe mode, or any other mode
Dont have any recovery disk
Dont have the XP home edition CD, software come with PC
Dont have boot discs..
Cant seem to find anyway to get a command prompt

I suppose my maine problem right now is being able to get a command prompt


HELP

[Urban_Squrill]

Sorry man. Just like me I think your kinda screwed. MY thinking is to reinstall.

[Makaveli]

tech support is sending me quickrestore CDs if anyone has any ideas in the mean time, or wants to help me edit the Boot.ini file to see if i can correct the incorrect lines, please help.. I have boot discs and a cammand prompt to work with

[Love2Learn]

well my first instinct would be to say try and get that .dll off the internet. From there you would have to find where to place it in the system.

-L2L

[Eraserhead]

I suspect that the hal.dll file is probably OK but it's initialized by ntoskrnl.exe, which is the file that's modified when you want to change the XP boot screen.

Your boot.ini file is probably ok, too. All that does is give you a startup menu if you've got more than one OS on your system so you can choose which OS to boot into at startup.

There's really nothing you can do until you can install a new copy of hal.dll and/or ntoskrnl.exe.
Rather than reinstalling XP, your quick restore CD might be able to bring up the recovery console, in which case you can just reinstall the corrupted files.

[Makaveli]

I have a the new hal.dll which i dont think I need, because as said i think the file is ok. What i need to do now is edit my boot.ini, but i am not sure how. I am trying to figure out the EDIT tool for dos to allow me to edit my boot.ini file. I have a EDIT program on floppy but dont know what to do next..

[Eraserhead]

you probably won't see the boot.ini file (which is in your root directory) because it's hidden.
Use the DOS command attrib to see it - go to the root directory and type

attrib -r -h boot.ini (or c:\boot.ini if you're not in the C: drive)

which unhides it and also removes the read only attribute, so you can modify it.
Then all you need to do is type

edit boot.ini

at the C: prompt (or if you're on the floppy drive type edit c:\boot.ini assuming that your default HDD letter is C

You can then modify it as you wish, save and exit. Don't forget to reapply the attributes by typing the same command as earlier, but replacing the minus signs with plus signs

[Makaveli]

Erasehead

After typing in that command I get

"The Parameter is not valid"

[meese]

If you can get your hands on an XP cd, run through the first portion of of the install up to the first reboot. Then remove the cd and try booting from the hard drive.

[Eraserhead]

Are you typing it *exactly* as I posted?

attrib <space> <minus> r <space> <minus> h <space> boot.ini ?

It should work.
Oh, you might have to add a "-s" parameter as well, as I think boot.ini is also marked as a system file (although this won't make any difference to the "invalid parameter" error)

If that still doesn't work, you can edit boot.ini anyway without changing the attributes, then save as a different filename, then delete boot.ini and rename your saved file as boot.ini

To delete the old boot.ini while it's still hidden, type

del/ah /f boot.ini