Member Avatar for SnowOptix

Hello everyone,

I was installing Windows XP OEM onto my friend's computer. I have done this several times, but this was the first on my friend's machine. He was running a bootleg copy of XP previously and the copyright warnings were annoying him, so I gladly accepted the offer to reinstall Windows for $10.

I have a XP OEM CD and I have used it in my computer to reinstall it 3 times. However, I am having problems with it now on my friend's machine. After XP reformats the hard drive and starts to load the setup files, it stops at around 30-50% with an error, "Windows cannot load 'xxx.dll', press ESC to skip, press ENTER to retry, ect." I have retried over and over but it will not budge. I press escape, but every file after that gives me the same message.
We tried exiting the installer and reformating it one more time. This also did not fix the error.

What can I do? Is it my friend's machine or is it my disk? Does Windows have a "self destruct" feature after it is used over X amount of times?

I figure I must do something in the ASR, but if you know the command line, please share!

Thank you all for your assistance!

-Anthony

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by sanjeevmalhotra
Member Avatar for raybay

Be certain you do not have a scratch or smudge on the surface of the disc... Polish it with a VERY Soft cloth, a VIVA paper towel, and 99% alcohol or denatured alcohol. Try again.

Member Avatar for caperjack

Be certain you do not have a scratch or smudge on the surface of the disc... Polish it with a VERY Soft cloth, a VIVA paper towel, and 99% alcohol or denatured alcohol. Try again.

wow you live where Viva paper towel is soft .lol

Member Avatar for gerbil

..and just what is your friend going to do after 30? days tick by with no activation? [and he will be bothered by M$ every one of those 30 days...] Cos if you put in your numbers, well, someone is going to lose out. You.

Member Avatar for SnowOptix

..and just what is your friend going to do after 30? days tick by with no activation? [and he will be bothered by M$ every one of those 30 days...] Cos if you put in your numbers, well, someone is going to lose out. You.

Well, I have done this several times... You call microsoft, lie a bit, tell them that you are just reformatting, and they activate it for ya.

But now we have a different problem. Cleaning the disk worked for the setup files. But now, the hal.dll file always corrupts itself or goes missing. We solved this by ordering a new version of Windows. I just hope this is all the problem.

Member Avatar for gerbil

pulled by poster.

Member Avatar for gerbil

hal.dll appears to be dynamically generated for each computer from a template file on the xp CD [ on the cd in i386 hal.dll is only 52KB, but once it gets onto my machine it is 104KB under the drivercache folder]...
In that generation and installation process it may corrupt, and you cannot just do a copy job. Here is a method which appears to get a new hal.dll installed on the pc.... Try it and let us know how it goes. Read down to don ho #1034.
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

Member Avatar for sanjeevmalhotra

it could be the problem with the CD ROM drive in the computer. Try changing the CD ROM Drive and look for scratches on the XP CD.

Member Avatar for sanjeevmalhotra

Start your computer with a Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition Startup disk, type sys c: at the command prompt, and then press ENTER. and then try to perform a clean install using XP CD

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