Thinkpads Forum

I received the nasty "hal.dll file missing or corrupt" error on my Lenovo R60 and cannot recover. Tried inserting XP CD-ROM and repairing Windows but Setup told me I have no hard drive installed now. Eeek!

No idea where to go to from here...

Can anyone help??

Narelle

HAL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer. If Windows is complaining about it missing, then it most likely cannot read the disk. And the repair not finding it, either, supports that. But since Windows does start to boot, then at least the boot sector is there.

Try enabling the SATA controller compatibility mode in the BIOS -- it may be that the Windows boot disk you are using (is it the R60 one?) does not include the latest SATA drivers, and this can't access the disk. Once Windows is running again, you can then turn compatibility mode back off.

In the BIOS change the HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode. Your thinkpad will see the hard drive.

Afterwards do this:

Insert and boot from your Windows XP CD.
At the first R=Repair option, press the R key
Press the number that corresponds to the correct location for the installation of Windows you want to repair.
Typically this will be #1
Type bootcfg /list to show the current entries in the BOOT.INI file
Type bootcfg /rebuild to repair it
Take out the CD ROM and type exit.

Thanks guys for the fast response!

I got to the rebuild and it gave the following response:

Windows scan installation successful

Add to boot list? (Yes/No/All)

As per microsoft support, I typed in Y, entered the load identifier as Windows XP Professional and hit enter to the next question.

Exit and reboot but I find I have two XP Professionals to boot from -- one says Microsoft XP Professional and one says XP Professional. An enter on the Microsoft XP Professional pulls up another error and an enter on the XP Professional pulls up hal.hll error again.

I'm still back at square one except that the compatability change helped setup find my hard drive.

Ready to try something else when you are.

Thanks again and waiting for further instructions.

Narelle

p.s. After the 'R' for repair, the system never asked to key in the number '1' or otherwise. It went straight to the prompt, where I typed 'bootcfg /list' and finally 'bootcfg /rebuild'. Was this correct?

Narelle.

You need to update DirectX. It will work.