PCTech Forums

I've tried the CD in both drives and reset but each time it just returns as before to the boot error screen as described above.

I do have another pc with a cd burner.

According to this is how you change your boot sequence.
Turn the PC on and immediately start tapping the DELETE or DEL key. Keep tapping this until a menu appears.

Use the LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys on the keyboard to move along the upper menu until you highlight BOOT. The boot device list will appear
Use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to move the highlight so it is next to ATAPI CD-ROM drive.

Press the + (Plus symbol) on the keypad to move the ATAPI CD-ROM do it again to move it to the top position.

Press F10 and then ENTER to save the change and exit the BIOS.
The screen will go black and the system will reboot and it should boot to the CD Rom drive.

Mesh also said that you should have a Windows XP CD so let me know when you can boot from the CD.

Thanks Gecko.

It booted from the CD from your instructions, and it has presented a screen with the following options:

Welcome to Windows xp setup

to setup Windows XP press .....
to repair a Windows installation using recovery console press ....
or to quit press .....

I have quitted at this time as I don't know which of the two options I should use.

You might want to copy these instruction to notepad and print them out.
First lets repair/rebuild the boot.ini file because I think that may be the problem

Start your system with the windows xp cd
When you receive the "Welcome to Setup" message, press R to start the Recovery Console.
At the next screen select your windows XP installation by typing “1” and press enter.
If you do not type 1 and just press enter the system will reboot.
Next is the Admin password this is almost always blank so just press enter.

You should now be at a command prompt in the recovery console.
Now type “bootcfg /rebuild” (without the quotes) and press enter
You will receive a message that is similar to the following:
Total Identified Windows Installs: 1

[1] C:\Windows
Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All)
Type Y and press enter

Next you will receive a message that is similar to the following message:
Enter Load Identifier
Type the name of your operating system, and then press ENTER. This is either Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.

Then you receive a message that is similar to the following:
Enter OS Load options
When you receive this message, type /fastdetect, and then press ENTER.
Now type exit and press enter the system will reboot.

If you still get the error then you will have to replace the hal.dll file
Same instructions as above to boot into the Recovery Console
Once you are at the command prompt type the below and press enter.
expand D:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\windows\system32\hal.dll

The D in the above line is the drive letter for you CD drive if yours is different then substitute.
Now type exit and the system will reboot.
Upon a successful boot into windows, windows will detect new hardware.
That is because you replaced the hal.dll file (Hardware Abstraction Layer)
Just let the wizard run and find all you hardware, it will use you existing drivers.

You should be good to go at this point