Automated System Recovery Help?

Good morning everyone, this is my first post of many, ive read the forum rules and i am a very long member with many forums so i kinda know the "Do's" and "Donts'" lool
I do like this forum seems you all are a bunch of friends!

Anyway can any of you please help me ive got here a friends IBM Thinkpad T40 laptop he wants me to repair it but i am a little out of my depth/knowledge with whats happened with the OS, its running on XP pro and on boot i get the usual IBM thinkpad main boot screen then its giving me the "\system32\hal.dll. missing "

Ive been told to pop in my xp pro disc in and do a "Automated System Recovery" or use the "Recovery console" but when i insert the XP disc there is no Recovery console option? the only three options ive got is is

* to setup XP on a selected item press enter
* to create a partition in the unpartitioned space press C
* to delete the selected partion press D
So what i am trying to do is download or find a way to get hold of the "Automated System Recovery" disc can anyone kindly help please?

Its also worth noting the laptop DID boot to desktop but it was all corrupted and in a right state so i noticed the BIOS was well outdated so i updated it and i also noted the BIOS/CMOS battery wasnt holding a charge so i replaced that too and since then ive been confronted with this problem??

PLEASE NOTE: There is files i MUST get from the laptop before i erase it all which makes this a nightmare of a job for me! if i couild just get it to boot to desktop that would be great!

Thanks so much...

 

ASR may not be an option for you, did your friend make ASR backups before this issue?

See Automated System Recovery overview in Windows XP for more information.

Particulary,

If you want to try and resolve the issue using the recovery console you should look at Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users

Have you tried a repair install though, this may resolve your issues leaving data files intact.