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Lance McGrewFlag for United States of America

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Missing or Corrupt HAL.dll - Windows XP Pro - Vista Ultimate Dual Boot

Dual Boot system with Vista Ultmate on C: and Windows XP Pro on D:  Both were booting okay until I tried allocating additional space using Vista Disk Manager to create a volume for Windows 7.   System will still boot Vista but when XP is chosen, /system32/hal.dll is missing or corrupt.  I tried copying from \windows\ServicePackFiles\i386\hal.dll but that did not fix.
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PUNKY
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You need to fix boot.ini in the XP partition. For sure Hal.dll is still present but boot.ini is pointing to another partition.

Just open notepad with elevated privileges in Vista an then look for boot.ini.
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after fix boot may be ur dual mode will be remove then u have to download EASYbcd and make another boot option
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;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
----------------------------

Viewing the
Document.pdf
Viewing the attached document.pdf in the above comment, and looking at the current Windows XP boot.ini, what needs to be changed in the boot.ini?
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I changed the boot.ini to partition(2).  The Windows XP splash screen displayed which is a step further than before.  Problem then, the progress bar stopped and the system hung.  Am still able to boot into Vista.    I don't have a FAT primary boot partition so should I run FIXMBR from the Windows XP Recovery Console?
Now you know that your booting from the right partition and the problem is not hal.dll. I think you must try to repair XP boot. Then you'll need to repair Vista too.
Changed boot.ini from partition(1) to partition(2), then used Windows XP CD to launch recovery console.  Ran fixboot and fixmbr.  First attempt to boot Windows XP required Safe Mode.  After that, Windows XP is booting normally.  No addtional fix was required for Vista side of dual boot.