I am running Windows XP Pro. I've only been running XP for a few months so I'm not that familiar with it. It's installed on a new machine, it was not upgraded from a previous OS. I have not installed any new hardware in a couple weeks, and the last software I installed was Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard and that was several days ago. I was working fine all day, and then out of the blue applications started closing; everything but several IE windows. I closed the IE windows and tried to soft boot (ctl-alt-del) but got no response, so I hit the power switch. Windows would not come back up. [I'm sending this from my old, outdated, but reliable Windows NT computer that I hadn't yet wiped out]. I got an error that I was missing hal.dll. I've been poking around trying to find a solution, but everything seems to run into another problem.
I've tried booting from CD and running the recovery console. Once I get to the c-drive I'm actually at the c: prompt, not c:\Windows. I don't remember if that was the case initially, or just after playing around for a while. I wanted to try to expand hal.dll from the CD, but I keep getting "Access Denied" on all my pc files.
I tried running bootcfg /list and bootcfg /rebuild, but I get "there are currently no boot entries available to display".
Chkdsk says that the volume appears to be in good condition.
I tried to run a Repair Install, but I do not get Repair option (I booted from CD, selected setup Windows XP, accepted license agreement, but do no get repair option).
I'm I stuck with re-installing XP and then re-installing all my applications, or is there another way out of this?
My data is mostly on separate *logical* drive. Will it still be there if I do a fresh install?
I'd appreciate any help!!!!
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