2 fold question....

One of my office cohorts has crashed his computer. Windows (XP) won't boot; nor will it launch in Safe mode (any variety). When I attempted the Recovery Console, it said it stopped because it could not find the file windows root.system32\hal.dll

I have copied that file from my computer onto a disk but I'm unaware of how to install it on his computer in the condition it's in. First, can it be done?
Second, if so, how? If not and I have to do a recovery, does anyone know how I can download the system recovery disk? We are registered with a multi-users license from Microsoft but so far, I haven't been able to get anywhere. The computers were purchased in October of last year and the recovery disks have vanished.

Lastly, is it possible to do a system restore without Windows running? I'm thinking no, but I wanted to see if any of you would have some insight.

Thanks in advance,

George

 

Here is some info for you to look at...
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

You could get a boot cd, like Knoppix and boot to it and manuplate files that way.

 

FooGoo,

Thanks for the help! I wound up taking the hard drive and installing it in my machine for the purpose of copying the file from my Sys32 folder to the one on his HD. Trouble is, when I booted my machine, it detected alot of the problems on it and attempted to fix them as it went along. By the time I got to the file copy part, I opened the file on his HD and discovered the hal.dll file was already there. Thoughts on this?

The latest situation is once I reinstalled the HD in his computer, it kept insisting on running Chkdsk. After running a few diagnostic tools on it, it stopped doing the Chkdsk and boots without stopping.

Thanks again for your help,

George