access denied when using recovery console for hal.dll error

[Kana]

I am having a old desktop running with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and updated with all recent patches from Windows Update. Since past three days, about 4 times a day I receive Bluscreen saying something “hal.dll is corrupted”. I searched the error on MS Sites and found them saying to repair going into using the recovery console. Now the problem is my system is not able to get into recovery console.

According to the process when I insert my XP CD, boot from CD, I need to press R where it will ask me for Admin Password to enter the Recovery, right? But in my case it wont asks me for password and directly says “Access Denied”

What can I do to get into the recovery? Please help.

[TABANL]

Do you have any external HDD, USB Flash driver, Camera, Printer, etc connected to the system? If yes, unplug all external devices except Keyboard and Mouse and then try to get into recovery console. These external devices also create problem when you try to boot from another sources like CD or external drive. As far as HAL.DLL is concerned I will suggest you to also check the following article describing how to repair missing or corrupted HAL.DLL

[Kana]

Thank you very much for the help TABANL. Yes, i had few external devices connected earlier, as per your instructions i removed everything except keyboard and mouse but still no success. The problem is still there. Actually the problem is i never created Admin password, is it why it is not asking me for the admin password? How can i access to Recovery console?

[Jason A]

Hello Kana, just try out the following steps and see if it works for you.

• Boot with the CD in the CD-ROM and select Recovery Console.
• When you get the Administrator password leave as blank and press Enter.
• Then type in the new command prompt: C:\>CD Press Enter
• Type the following: expand X:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\windows\system32 (here X is your CD-ROM)

[McQ]

I'm running into a similar issue as this.

Problem I'm having is that I can get as far as the Recovery Console, however, I am never given the option to choose which system I want to alter (meaning I never have the option to type "1" and ENTER) and subsequently never get to enter any password.

Also, I am only seeing C:\> instead of the C:\WINDOWS I've read elsewhere I SHOULD see.

I attempted to use the EXPAND command. I believe it was something like "EXPAND D:\i386\hal.dl_ C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32" and was faced with an ACCESS DENIED.

I read elsewhere to try these commands:

SET AllowWildCards = TRUE
SET AllowAllPaths = TRUE
SET AllowRemovableMedia = TRUE

But none of that worked, explaining that the SET command is currently disabled.

Next, I tried another option to directly fix my HAL.DLL problem by using "BOOTCFG /REBUILD"

It scanned it for a while and eventually gave me this error:

Error: Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows installations.
This error may be caused by a corrupt file system, which would
prevent Bootcfg from successfully scanning. Use chkdsk to
detect any disk errors.

Problem with that is, I've ran CHKDSK AND CHKDSK /R already and when they are finished it says there has been nothing fixed.

Additional, possibly pointless information:
Whenever I boot my computer, two OSs are available, both are Windows XP, but one is Windows XP (bootscreen). There was a problem a while back where I'd boot into the non (bootscreen) version and it would freeze or something. Haven't had any problems booting since now.
On occasion, my system will go into sleep mode, when I move the cursor to awaken it, it will show a very, very, very dark image of the normal screen (usually a login screen).
I'm running on XP Pro (I think) on a Presario 2700T laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. It seemed this just came out of nowhere. Used the computer last night without any problems and got back from work to find the HAL.DLL error.