HELP ME!!!

[Foie]

OK, I left my (other) computer to get something to eat. I was transferring files from my external hard drive to my desktop and was running mIRC, as well as Mozilla Firefox (on GBAtemp).

I come back and this is what the screen says:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

(Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the file.

How do I fix this?

PS: Sorry for the newbness

 

[archagon]

Try Googling it.

 

[nintendofreak]

Here, try replacing it

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

 

[lagman]

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben...30184&x=21&y=10


http://www.publispain.com/dlls/H/download/hal.zip

 

[Foie]

Thanks for he help guys. And sorry for not spending the time to do some research on my own. I was kind of in a state of shock...

 

[teonintyfive]

Hal.dll is neccessary to open windows.
Without it you're screwed, but I see you fixed it.

 

[Foie]

Hal.dll is neccessary to open windows.
Without it you're screwed, but I see you fixed it.

Actually, I haven't fixed it yet. I was just thanking them for their responses. Any ideas on how this could have happened? I'm thinking it was my torrent downloads...

 

[lagman]

Don´t think so, seems like a buggy un/installation to me.

 

[Foie]

I found the recovery disk for the laptop, and I tried using it, but it does not work.

It gets to the part where it say "are you sure you want to recover your computer? You will lose all files blah blah blah..."
"Press © to continue or (A) to abort"

I then press c, but the computer restarts and never recovers. It goes in an endless loop...

EDIT:

I called the Toshiba support dude, and he told me that I probably fried the disk drive. Could this be due to the fact that I was transferring about 8 gigs of info from my external hard drive onto my laptop? Also, my computer has a history of overheating and shutting itself down... Could the combination of the two screwed it up?

 

[pikachucrackpipe]

boot cd and copy the file over
reboot

 

[fischju_original]

Get a live cd, like miniPE or BartPE from a torrent. They can run without a hard drive and will allow you to get on the internet, download the file, and replace it

 

[hanman]

the most likely cause for that error is a failing hard drive. go to hddguru.com and download a copy of mhdd. you can create a floppy or cd that you can boot to in order to scan your HD for errors. finding and downloading a copy of hal.dll is probably not going to work as there are several versions of this file for various CPU types. also, the computers i've seen this error on are usually missing much more than that one file. just test the hard drive, replace it if it's bad, or reload windows if it's ok. UBCD4WIN is a BartPE derivative that is very useful for retrieving data still on the drive.

 

[pikachucrackpipe]

hanman brought up a good point
you can run a hdd diag from your bios also