Hard drive bad, or corrupt, or….?

[grandmaw39]

I recently had a hard drive failure. That I can say for sure.

While using it, It suddenly shut down and came back up saying corrupted hal.dll file.
I have only been using this drive for a few months, and it oddly failed while in use. I have tried installing it as a slave drive to another working boot drive, and it just comes up going through a long list of “file errors”

I also tried using one of those things that allows you to use the harddrive as a USB flash drive, and XP mentioned that the drive couldn’t start.

So is the hard drive bad? Well, the hal.dll “corrupt or missing” screen that came on said try using the XP disks to fix the hal.dll. I just moved and can’t find the XP install disks, thus making me mental tearing apart my house while trying to find the disks.


One thing that the computer does do is recognize the fact the model number and brand of the hard drive. Is this a sign that the drive actually works and is corrupt, or is that hard coded into the physical drive that XP would recognize the model?

Also, seeing as how my disks seem to be gone, is there a way I could get my XP Product ID or Registration code or whatever off of the working boot drive, which was stored away when the fabulous new drive came to be? I may possibly be able to borrow some install disks, which I assume would only work out for me if I was able to use the code that came with it.

It’s a large capacity WD drive, should this matter to anyone.