Gateway laptop will not start....

I have a 5 year old gateway laptop,when trying to start I get a black screen and a message that reads windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windows root>\system32\hal.dll. I have tried to do a system recovery using the recovery discs provided when I purchased the puter...it seems to go through the motions of re installing but when it tries to restart I get the same message.I can access a dos typw window that I believe is the recovery window but I am not sure.Wondering how I can copy and install the file it is asking for if I cannot start the puter past the error message I am receiving.I do not have any xp inst. disc's as they were not provided with the comp. just the recovery disk was provided.I tried looking at and modifiying the boot.ini file as I read where that could be a problem but i cannot access it either.I did set the bios to read the cd 1st as per gateways instructions...any help at all would be greatly appreciated....Royboy

 

Hi Royboy,
Welcome to BBS
Read this post it should help you out
http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp/66092-hal-dll-missing-corrupt.html
regards Jac

 

Not working

I have tried all the solutions offered in the links but to no avail...I admit I could be typing dos commands incorrectly as I have evry limited experience with dos.I have tried ot reinstall from the recovery disk as well with no luck.I did install a version of xp from another pc a Dell just to see if it work and to my surprise it did with limited results at least I can be sure the hd did not crash.A question I have is can I somehow completely clear the hd and just install a retail version of xp home ..if so are there any resourses to find a used xp home program....( money concerns here).Also i was able to find a hal.dll file using the installed xp software from my other puter and copied it to a blank cd would this work to replace the original corrupt hal.dll file if i find a way to copy it into the system32 file folder? Thanks

 

Some of the symptons you have described could point to a failling hard drive, in order to illiminate it from the possible causes I would get the hard drive diagnostics from the manufacturers site. You have only entered the bit rate in your system details so I cannot give you the place to get this from. You will need to get the make and model number off your hard drive, search for the manufacturers site and download the HD diagnostics image file for dos and burn it to a CD with image burning software (on another PC) and then boot with the disc in the drive.

As can be seen from the link Jackrabbit supplied it may not just be a simple case of replacing the hal.dll file. If you can boot into safe mode you could try that by simply copying and pasting the file from the CD.

Try the HD test and we will go from there.

The Dell disk will have caused problems because the drivers on it will not be correct for your system.