Anyone have a sleg hammer [Windows\System32\hal.dll cannot be found]

Last Aug I purchased a Gateway Gt5235E desk top .
AMD Athlon 64x2 Processor 3800 +
Dual-core 64 bit processor with AMD 64 Technology.
2.0 GHz 2x512KB, L2 cache. 2000 MHz system Bus.
nVIDIA Geforce 6100.
up to 128 MB of Shared Video Memory.
PCI Express slot available.
Optical Drive DVD _+RW Multi-Format
Hard Drive 200GB.
Memory 1024MB DDR2.
Dual channel
9-in-1 Memory card reader
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition.
By Sept. I had to replace the modem . By Oct I was working with it an first got a black screen then blue and stop working. I was told the battery went out (when it is always plug in ) so I replaced the battery,
But when I turned it on I got an error you have no o/s.
By this time most people would be asking for there money back but this desk top came from UBid.com not from gateway .
By the end of Dec. I got a system Recovery disk from Gateway and by Jan. 4 08 I was back on line until 1/20/08 when everything went again. Now the recovery disk will not load I get an error message <Windows>System32\hal.dll can not be found.
Has anyone ever had this problem or is just me.
Most sites I go to tell me to logon to there web site to run a check on the desk top but how do you do that when you have no o/s in it?
I am to the point of using a sleg hammer on it.

 

Pete C. Thanks for the info.
I am back online and this time when I downloaded it there was no error message. All I had to do was remove the hard drive and then remove the battery. Let the battery out for one hour re-install it and the system loaded with no problem. I don "t understand this but as long as it works I will live with it.
Hope no one else has to go through this.