Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

ravenvii

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 17, 2004
7,585
494
Melenkurion Skyweir
I don't know where to put this, since it's for a PC laptop, so I just put it here.

Basically, I need help with this weird issue. Basically, when I install Windows XP (fresh install), and install everything, everything runs fine for a bit, then it crashes, and would not boot up (HAL.dll missing error). I would reinstall, and it would reoccur. It's obviously a harddrive error (I ruled out the RAM after it passed the memtest86+ test overnight with flying colors).

That's about 3 months ago. Last week, I decided to put Linux on it for kicks and giggles.

But it ran flawlessly. Left it on for several days, installed a bunch of software on it, ran fsck, etc etc. The harddrive acted like a champ.

Recently, I decided to give XP another try. Installed it. Let it run for a couple days, no problems. Ran disk check, it returned perfect results. Ran HD Tune's error testing, 0 damaged sectors. Disk health is 100%. No crashes yet.

So... what's going on here??? Any ideas?
 
The hal.dll error is fairly common with other than totally default installs, and generally has to do with the boot.ini file. If you're not doing a default install as far ad drive/volume, it's generally required to modify the file to point everything in the right direction.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.