Hard drive dead?

[Megami]

Well no one in the Windows forum answered me, so I'll try here.

Woke up in the morning, turned on the computer. Hal.dll was missing or corrupt, couldn't boot. Considering I didn't do anything to remotely cause this, I didn't have much faith.

Tried several things after booting from a windows disk, such as expanding hal.dll (access denied), and bootcfg /rebuild (failed to complete), chkdsk (found errors and froze).

Decided to try to reinstall Windows, it did not find my pre-existing Windows installed and I only have an upgrade CD (I think) so I can't try to install it until I get a full copy but even then I don't think it will work.

Hard drive shot; Yes/No?

Windows XP SP2
Custom built computer over 3 years old

[kuszmania9999]

download disc utilities from the hdd manufacturer, check with it

[dairyman]

Click on your HDD manafacturer to download the diagnostics:

Hitachi
Seagate
Samsung
Fujitsu
Western Digital

Note when you visit the Western Digital website, you must choose the right software.
I couldn't find IBM HDD Diagnostics.

[street1 (RIP)]

Below site is an article on your problem.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm



http://www.z-a-recovery.com/ref-vendors.htm

[patio]

dairyman,

Note when you visit the Western Digital website, you must choose the right software.
I couldn't find IBM HDD Diagnostics.

Just so you know for future reference IBM sold it's disk drive division to Hitachi awhile ago...the Hitachi diagnostics are designed to run on all IBM HDD's.

[Megami]

Click on your HDD manafacturer to download the diagnostics:

Hitachi
Seagate
Samsung
Fujitsu
Western Digital

Note when you visit the Western Digital website, you must choose the right software.
I couldn't find IBM HDD Diagnostics.

I have WD. I ran the quick test and it found no errors, I'm running the extended test now.

[Megami]

Alright no errors found at all with the diagnostics. I guess I have to find my copy of Windows 98 and try to reinstall it since I can't expand hal.dll.

[patio]

You will need an XP CD if you want to go back to that...otherwise it looks like Win98 for now.

[Broni]

Please read this, because from I've read here, it's not necessarily hal.dll problem:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm

Another option, would be downloading hal.dll from 3rd party site, like:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal