Ok, I built my own PC and it has been a rock for two years. I've since lost my copy of Windows XP, can't seem to find it.
I'm getting the HAL.DLL file is missing or corrupt error. I saw one of the threads on here regarding it, but none of the solutions work for me.
Part of the problem is that my hard drive is not IDE, but Smart (stupid) ATA. I never thought this would be a problem, but I don't know anyone who has a computer with an ATA power cable. So making my drive a slave is out.
I have a boot disk that my friend in IT made for me, including a fresh HAL.DLL file from his service pack 2. I can boot to DOS, but once there I can't seem to copy my new HAL.DLL file to my c:\winnt\system32 directory. It keeps saying invalid drive. Is there something about the DOS copy command I don't know?
I also tried editing my boot.ini file from the c: root, but it says insufficient memory. Any suggestions?