Anybody want to try to figure this PC problem out?

[Larry_OHF]

My sister-in-law calls up saying that her PC is asking for a boot disk. I ask her what has caused this. She responded that for a long time now, the PC would boot up very slowly and sometimes not boot well, and would have to be restarted. She had been leaving it on and not rebooting at all for months. She forgot today and did so, and now the prompt for a boot disk was coming up. I made her a boot disk (WinXP) and she tried it out when she got home, but said that it is now saying that the hal.dll file was missing or corrupt, yet she could not get into Windows to install this .dll even if I made a copy of one for her. She said the most recent message is that disk configuration is unable to proceed and is asking her to do something that I forgot now what it was asking.

Other interesting information. She said that the processor cooling fan sometimes works and sometimes does not work, and they have been leaving the case cover off. I almost died when she told me this.

My conclusions are that she has either got a dead processor, a virus, a bad sector on the HDD, a corrupted OS, a dead HDD, or that some evil god of technology is really having a field day with her torment. I have no time to go over there and mess with it myself for a day or two, so before I go and waste my time piddling around with it, I wanted to see if anybody agreed with one of my assessments, had more to offer, or advice to arm myself with.

Help is appreciated as always.

[PurpleXVI]

If she had a dead processor, I doubt her computer would even be starting. Dead or damaged HDD/Data sounds more likely.

My guess would be that her fan started conking out and the overheating screwed up her HD.

I'd start off by opening the case and checking all connections(Make sure to be properly grounded when doing this, of course, don't want to accidentially short out even more things.), making sure everything is in it's slot. Even going so far as to jiggle all the jacks in the back to make sure they were properly in. After that, blow out and clean out any dust in there.

Afterwards, I'd pop out the OS HDD and find someone willing to let me drop it in their computer. If it boots there, or at least gets farther than with my own computer, I'd know that the HDD was unlikely to be the real source of all the crap.

Even if the HDD turns out to be toast, I'd also consider a new PSU and processor, just to avoid frying my next HDD in short order.

[Hivetyrant]

Hal.dll?

That's a fun one!

I have had that come up on my screen MANY times in the past, but not recently.
Unfortunately every time it was due to a dodgy hard disk (All Seagate Baracuda's-Hate those drives, had 5 die)

Anyways, the easiest way to fix the problem (If only temprarily) is strangely to boot from an XP CD, let it begin the setup process, and at the first prompt screen, choose to go to the recovery console, once that has started (will bring you to a DOS like console and ask for the administrator password) use the following commands:
*FIXMBR - Always handy, re-write the master boot record and cleans a bit of crap
*FIXBOOT

This will hopefully sort out the issue.
I can't garuntee that it will however as all those commands are doing is forceing the OS to write a new boot sequence. Though it has worked for me in the past a few times (If only temporarily)

I would then recommend that you back up all your stuff (assuming it works)

If not, you should be able to copy some stuff off the HDD with the recovery console.


I am assuming however that she is running XP.

Also, I don't know how old her PC is, but not all CPU fans spin non stop

[Zebodog]

My money's on the PSU.

Booting a PC loads the PSU, and a dodgy unit will cause all kinds of grief during boot.
Interesting things can occur to Windows when your hard drive loses power halfway through a boot, shutdown or general disk write.

The HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is the translator between the PC hardware and Windows. Having it missing or corrupt is generally the result of a disk write failure, and while it's a severe PITA to deal with, it's not the end of the world. It does however signify larger issues and it's time to get eveything of importance off of that drive...fast.

I'd provide you with some links regarding repairing the missing/corrupt hal.dll, but we don't need to go down that road again. Google for hal.dll and you'll have a multitude of possibilities to try.

[Larry_OHF]

Thanks for all the great information, guys. I'll let you know how it goes if I manage to get out there to see her PC tomorrow.

[Felix The Assassin]

The hal.dll lives or dies in the boot sector. This is a clear indication of HDD failure. First question to answer is what caused it. Second would be to boot from another drive and scavenge all usable data from the HDD if it will scan.

As Hive pointed out, not all CPUs are high-end secondary heating sources. The spousal unit's store bought Dell only kicks when needed, and is the utmost quietest PC I have ever experienced. But, that does not mean all low grade CPUs do this.

Sorry, dude, but the end is near on this one.

[Larry_OHF]

My sister-in-law's husband...(is there an official name for that?) called me up before I could get to him with all this information and said that he's counting it a total loss and is going to Wal-mart to buy a new HP Pavilion for $449 that comes with WinVista installed.

I am a bit bothered that he did not give me a chance to work on it to see if I could do anything, but it's his PC in the end.

[Hivetyrant]

Hmm, if you still feel like helping, maybe just remind them that there is still a chance of getting their data back off the PC, though they may not have had any photo's or documents that they want to keep. And as you said, it's their computer