No Devices Detected. Hal.dll not found!

[rhinorc]

Ok yesterday my computer was running good then I ran kazaa and noticed it started freezing up for bout 10-15 minutes at a time so I closed it and it still continued. Then my screen went blue giving me a Kernal_Inpage_Errorblue screen and some other junk...I just restarted my computer.....but when I restarted it boots and sais It see's my WD 80gb harddrive and Samsung DVD Drive but after that it comes up and sais:
Primary master: No drive
Primary Slave: No Drive
Secondary Master: No drive
Secondary Slave: No drive
(The motherboard is a REPAIRED SOYO KT400 Dragon Ultra Plat.)Then if I wait for a few seconds it comes up with another screen saying windows can't load because it can't find the hal.dll file....so did my harddrive fail? do I need to reformat? Bad memory? whats up?

BTW I just got this computer running a 2 weeks ago (My first computer to build) I've have ALOT of frustration/Money into this thing...

The only Prior Problem I have had with this thing is it not Posting the first time I turn it on during the day but after holding the power button to shut it down and rebooting it does fine...not sure if that is related to this or not but thought I would throw it out there.

The only non decent parts on my computer are my K-Byte memory *just bought a 512mb stick of corsair lastnight before this problem...along with some speakers and keyboard* and my SOYO motherboard....its ok.

[RipperRoo]

This is the Windows "Hardware Abstraction Layer" file and is specific to the individual computer and its hardware.

1. Access the recovery console
2. Try running bootcfg/ rebuild from the console
3. Try Start>Run>CMD. sfc/sfc.exe with the original Win XP disk in place

The system file checker (sfc) tool scans all protected files to verify their versions and repopulates the %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache folder with correct versions, as described above.

[Drolith]

*this is Rhinorc different account* um I can't access the Start menu because it NEVER loads windows..its stop the booting up process at the *can't find hal.dll* thing, I tried restoring my computer from the XP CD but it sais it can't find a windows operating sistem...I want to know how in the hell can I go from playing games and having a good ol time to my O/S disapearing...just doesn't make sence.

could it be anything hardware related? or is this just some software conflict. (I've had to much money and time invested in hardware I dont' want another damn problem from that aspect...) do you all think a reformat will fix this or will it return?and is it fixable?

RipperRoo: could I access the bootcfg from the XP Pro CD?

[Drolith]

PROGRESS!!ok well I"ve been reading around like crazy and tried the next thing on my list of "things to try" which was chkdsk. I ran that and it got to 50% and said "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems" what does that mean?
well then I tried chkdsk /p and got "chkdsk found one or more errors on the volume.
78140128 kb total 4096 in each allocation unit
68001884 kb available 19535032 Total allocation units on disk
17000471 allocation unit available on disk"
so I said...ok "exit" and rebooted to see if anything new would happen...didn't think it would BUT IT DID...the XP Pro loading screen showed...but thats as far as I got. It froz up on the xp loading screen so I rebooted and started in safe mode and BAM it took me in safe mode...but what do I do now? with my new information and the ability to access my desktop (VERY LIMITED OPTIONS IN SAFE MODE!!) where do I go from here to FULLY restoring my use of XP pro normaly? should I scan my harddrive for errors to see if its hardware related? If so what software? Should I edit my bootcfg or do a bootcfg /rebuild to see if that will fully fix my problems??? edit my boot.ini?

[RipperRoo]

Try Start>Run>CMD. sfc/sfc.exe with the original Win XP disk in place

The system file checker (sfc) tool scans all protected files to verify their versions and repopulates the %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache folder with correct versions.


btw, did you stop using the other account due to a lost password ect?

cause if so say and i can sort it out for you, as we activly discourage people from having more than one account

[Drolith]

RipperRoo, thx I"ll try that.
And about the account thing, it was my friends account I was using at that time *was at his house when this happened* and I didn't have an account so when I got home I made one and posted the follow ups.

[LPDad]

The quick way to fix this.

Put your windows disk in and boot from the disk.
Choose to INSTALL windows, go PAST the initial screen where it asks you to press R to repair using the recovery console..Keep going...the installer will then look for any previous versions of XP installed. It should FIND your current version. At this point choose R to repair the selected Windows installation.

35 or so minutes later you will have a nice new version of windows installed, but ALL of your programs and Settings will be saved. You WILL need to do the Windows update thing..which in itself is a pain..but this does work.
This is the simplest and probably the most foolproof way to fix XP problems.