The dreaded missing HAL.DLL error....

[Dr Mordrid]

I'll give scandisk a try.

Right about now I'd even consider an exorcism

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

r u using any kind of Drive Overlay software? That seems to cause problems for XP.

[schmosef]

In that vein, it could be something with the overlay (LBA) implementation in your BIOS. Maybe you should check if there's a newer version.

[schmosef]

A lot of people are linking to this page for advice: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm.

I'm not sure if there's anything there for you but take a look.

Check through this too: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...c_str_masc.asp
and this: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;330184

(but I assume you meant that you already tried rebuilding the boot.ini from the recovery console)

[Dr Mordrid]

I've been in and out of the recovery console too often to count.

Followup: neither scandisk or rebuilding from the Ghost file worked.

Could be that I'll just have to install it on another partition of the main bootups physical HDD instead of a second HDD.

The post-brownout 120g Maxtor RMA is due to arrive tomorrow night, so we'll see then if that strategy works when it arrives.

Meanwhile I guess I'll have to go with building the beta drive as a removable so I can get some beta work done.

You'd think that with all the problems people have with this in WinXP (Win2K was no problem at all) that M$ would fix it, but I guess they're waiting for VISTA so they can charge for it

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

have you considered using a partition manager/boot manager?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yeah. I tried using BootMagic and it gave less than stellar results.

I'm just going to use the drive as a removable boot drive 'til tomorrow when the replacement 120g gets here. Then I can try it on a partition of the same drive & see what happens.

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

Is the beta install in a primary or logical partition? Maybe try switching partition types?

[Chucky Cheese]

Dr,

is the beta partition marked as a GPT disk.. this is a quote from the help and support utility within XP

On Itanium-based computers, creates a Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition on a GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk.

Caution

Be very careful when using the create partition msr command. Because GPT disks require a specific partition layout, creating Microsoft reserved partitions could cause the disk to become unreadable. On GPT disks that are used to start Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, the EFI System partition is the first partition on the disk, followed by the Microsoft Reserved partition. GPT disks used only for data storage do not have an EFI System partition; the Microsoft Reserved partition is the first partition.
Windows XP 64-Bit Edition does not mount Microsoft reserved partitions. You cannot store data on them and you cannot delete them.

the root command is diskpart...i can't help but wonder if your looking at a problem related to this...you have tried everything else

cc