Aspire T180 wont install OS or recovery.

Afternoon,

First time posting on this forum :)

Basically i've had a problem with my Aspire t180 for a while now, gave up a long time but re-visiting the problem now.

A few years back I messed around with the operating systems and partitions (I'm really not that knowledgeable with computers) and came to the point where i formatted both my partitions to install Vista ultimate or something, but in the end would not install properly and I was left with no OS. This also happened around the time I was getting constant blue screens of death not long after I booted the computer, and was probably the reason I tried to format the computer or install a different OS. This happened a few months after I installed new RAM and a graphics card, but the computer ran fine and more efficiently afterwards for quite a while, so not sure if they are directly relevant to starting the problem. I have taken all new things I put in, out when trying to fix the problem.

I'm trying to re-format the computer or turn it back to it's factory settings using the 'Windows any time upgrade' disc which had fixed an issue long ago if I remember correctly with recovering a drive or whatever. However, when I boot the CD the bar goes full at 'Windows is loading files...' and then shortly the Vista loading bar and then just restarts. I've tried multiple times and it's always the same, even when I try and install various other operating systems.

After the ACER screen with the 'press f12' or whatever, it just stays at a black screen which says 'Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file.' But I don't see how I can install anything on this computer because it just restarts halfway through an OS installation or Windows recovery and then doesn't go back to it? It's like it was never even started.

Would greatly appreciate any advice on how to fix this problem. If you need any more information about it then just ask, if it's specific technical stuff then please say how to find it as well, because chances are I wont know how to :P

Thanks for taking the time to read this.