Neighbor's computer. XP Home. Child turned power strip off and then on while other child was surfing, maybe downloading. Now it won't boot.
It just keeps trying to boot. Put another HD in the tower and it boots so left with problem original drive (2 years old) . Getting several error messages. Right now it's missing or corrupt hal.dll. When trying to work with recovery disc, I get "when trying to update a password the return indicates the value provided is not a valid current password" or something close to that.
There is no start up disk, only a system recovery disc that does not work. Gets through but fixes nothing. I can slave the HD to my computer and access all files but cannot get it to boot. Have replaced the hal.dll, while a slave.
I have loaded another XP (from my start up disc)(now doesn't keep tring to boot) on to the drive temporarily and the drive will boot with that, but can I fix their XP? I tried recovery from the new XP, but ir asks for a password to work on the bad XP and there is no password...never set. Tried admin, left it blank...no go. But no problem running it on newly installed XP. Have worked on Boot ini, but it looks right.
Have checked Bios...order is cd/dvd, hard drive, floppy. Only using about 10% of the drive. Chdsk says its fine. Can I clear the drive, load from my XP disk, use their valid XP license? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
