I am a freelance I.T. support person. Customer called with system that would not boot. The error was "missing hal.dll". I have tried to run a Windows Repair with the Windows XP install CD (to possibly fix boot.ini) but I never get to the Repair option because Windows Setup crashes before that. It was then my intent to just do a Reinstall of Windows over c:\windows, but of course the CD still crashes with a BSOD before I ever get to that option.
The BSOD Stop Error is ... 0x0000007b
I've run the computer's built-in diagnostic on the hard drive and it passes. The general computer passes the diagnostics too.
The computer has two sticks of RAM and I have taken turns swapping each out and running the Windows Reinstall but both times it still crashes to the same BSOD.
I have removed all peripherals.
I tried hooking up the hard drive as a slave on another computer but when Windows booted, it started doing a "file repair" on the D drive (the problem hard drive) and I don't want it to corrupt any of the customer's data, so I stopped that procedure.
The drive is 130 gig SATA.
The BSOD on Windows install comes each time at ... "Setup is Starting Windows".
The customer MUST get the data stored on this hard drive back. He failed to make recent backups. Before I take it to disaster recovery lab, anything I can do??
Thank you!
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