The dreaded missing HAL.DLL error....

[Dr Mordrid]

OK...my system took a crapper last week and I made some changes.

All is working well in my personal bootup, in fact this A64 runs like hell. The problem is getting the dualboot up and running. By now I'm so brain-fried I can't think straight, so...

The setup is as follows;

OS: WinXP
Personal bootup: Primary IDE master (partition 1)
Beta bootup: Primary IDE slave (partition 1)

I can install the beta partition with no problem, but once it's finished the trouble starts. The first thing I do is change the name of the bootup in DM/Advanced and install the Santa Cruz drivers then reboot.

As soon as I reboot and select the beta bootup from the boot menu it craps out with the HAL.DLL missing crap.

Any ideas?

I've already tried doing an automatic repair and using the console to rebuild the boot, so don't suggest those.

Would it be better to use partition 2 of the Primary Master?

If I can't get this fixed soon I'm gonna KILL something

Dr. Mordrid

[Technoid]

OK...my system took a crapper last week and I made some changes.

All is working well in my personal bootup, in fact this A64 runs like hell. The problem is getting the dualboot up and running.

The setup is as follows;

OS: WinXP
Personal bootup: Primary IDE master (partition 1)
Beta bootup: Primary IDE slave (partition 1)

I can install the beta partition with no problem, but once it's finished the trouble starts. The first thing I do is change the name of the bootup in DM/Advanced and install the Santa Cruz drivers then reboot.

As soon as I reboot and select the beta bootup from the boot menu it craps out with the HAL.DLL missing crap.

Any ideas?

I've already tried doing an automatic repair and using the console to rebuild the boot, so don't suggest those.

Would it be better to use partition 2 of the Primary Master?

If I can't get this fixed soon I'm gonna KILL something

Dr. Mordrid

Have you tried installing and rebooting without messing with boot.ini or installing the sounddrivers?

[Dr Mordrid]

Several times....

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

Take it out back and shoot it with the black powder rifle. That'll show it.

Seriously.. dual booting is easier with a removable drive.

[schmosef]

Can you quote a copy of your boot.ini? Seems like something that we should be able to help you fix.

[Chucky Cheese]

...agreed...lets have a look at the boot.ini !!

OS: WinXP
Personal bootup: Primary IDE master (partition 1)
Beta bootup: Primary IDE slave (partition 1)

so there are 2 system partitions on the same cable...just on different drives

cc

[schmosef]

My guess is that the partition location for your beta install needs some tweaking.

Do you mean that you used the console to repair the boot.ini? Or just try to repair the windows installation?

If all else fails I'd try a third party boot manager program. PQ Boot Magic is pretty good, and it can give you complete isolation of your installations. You have to create a small FAT32 partition to install it into though.

[Dr Mordrid]

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP Personal" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP BETA" /fastdetect

BTW: for some reason the forum is printing the default='s "WINDOWS" text as "WINDOW S" unless I put quotes areound it as in this sentence. Weird....

Thing is the problem started as soon as I renamed the beta install without changing anything else.

Is there a registry entry for multiboots that this might affect?

EDIT:

I reinstalled the beta partition again and this time used MSCONFIG to re-order the bootups and make the personal install the default. Got the HAL.DLL error again

Dr. Mordrid

[spadnos]

What's in the boot.ini on the second drive?

According to this page, you should have a boot.ini on the second disk, that only knows about its own boot partition.

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 on 2nd Drive"

(this assumes you have WinNT, but I'd hope that XP is the same, with the appropriate directory name change)

See if that works, and we can google some more if not.

- Steve

[Dr Mordrid]

XP returned to using the WINDOWS folder, but otherwise they look the same.

That said this didn't work. I have the same boot.ini on both and it still can't find HAL.DLL.

Gawd.....

Dr. Mordrid

[spadnos]

It looked to me (from that article) like the boot.ini on the second drive shouldn't mention the first drive. You should only have the entry for the installation on the second drive.

- Steve

[Dr Mordrid]

OK....it appears my modding of the boot.ini has nothing to do with it. My latest try involved just pulling the WinXP CD and rebooting after the install finished. It STILL throws the HAL.DLL error

I think I'll go sharpen my Hari Kari knife....

Dr. Mordrid

[Chucky Cheese]

...it seems to me that you shouldn't need a boot.ini on the second drive...the arc path on the first drives boot.ini should tell it where to go for the boot code

can you try this??

cc

[Dr Mordrid]

I've tried it without a boot.ini on the second drive (this is how the installer set it up) and with a dup of the one on the main bootup copied over. No difference.

This is getting weird.

I did an install where I wiped the partition, reformatted, installed SP2 immediately and made it a point to not even look at the boot.ini crossways. IT REBOOTED!!

So....I proceed to install drivers.

I started with the Santa Cruz (no reboot necessary) and the RAID's drivers followed by a reboot. SUCESS!!

Next came the graphics tablet (no reboot) and the ATI Catalyst 5.8 drivers. SUCESS AGAIN!!

So now I'm figuring all is well, so I reboot to my bootable Ghost CD, do a backup and try booting back into BETA to install a few utilities and software....

HAL.DLL is missing AGAIN!!

Next stop: restore the Ghost and see if it works.

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

I have an account at experts-exchange.com. I'm looking through the articles to see what other people have done in your situation. One person fixed this problem by running scandisk. I guess it doesn't hurt for you to try. I'll keep looking for more advice.