Windows cannot boot because of missing/corrupt hal.dll! Help!

[Faceless Rebel]

PLEASE HELP!

Just built this box:

San Diego 3700+
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
1GB Geil Ultra PC4000
2x74GB Western Digital Raptors
etc...

I am having the strangest problem! I can install Windows XP Pro fine. I can boot Windows fine the VERY FIRST TIME. Then I restart Windows once, and it boots fine. Then I restart Windows again, and it won't boot but gives me the message 'Windows could not boot because the following file is missing or corrupt: [Windows root]\system32\hal.dll'.

I've tried reinstalling Windows twice now. Twice it has installed perfectly, and twice it has booted perfectly the first time, and then 1 more time, and then BOOM stupid message.

Can anyone help me? Why is Windows toasting itself the second boot?

[Minnyboy]

Pls post other settings like timings, oc etc...

When you first boot into windows, do you get the chance ot install drivers??

Sometimes when you install the NF4 drivers including the IDE drivers you get some problems as the IDE drivers are already installed when you did the F6 thing to install the RAID/IDE drivers they were already installed & installing them twice might give you problems...

Other than that, try your rig with just the 1 stick of RAM to see if the problems are gone...

Mabye PM someone with a K8N Neo4 Platinum or any MSI NF4 board to see if they can help you...

Last resort, take everything out & place you mobo on a bench with just the basics to see if that helps...

PU/Mobo/1 stick of RAM/HDD/PSU/CD-DVD ROM & see if the problem continues....

Hope this helps until someone with much more experience with MSI K8N Neo4 boards comes to the rescue...

Minh

[Faceless Rebel]

Well, I seem to have solved this problem.

Turns out the FIRST boot device wasn't properly set to the Raptors in the BIOS. (This is my first MSI build, so I admit I am still a little lost in the BIOS.) So, when I installed Windows, the GENIOUS Windows installer put the bootloader on the 1st master IDE drive, and then proceeded to install Windows onto a non-system partition on the Raptors. I guess Windows doesn't like it when I mingle IDE and SATA drives like this (bootloader and boot sector on IDE drive, boot partition on SATA drive) and it :banana::banana::banana::banana:s a brick when I try to boot.

The solution was to properly set the Raptors to first boot device in BIOS, and then do a clean install of Windows. Just to be damn sure I wasn't still overlooking something I pulled the power cables on the IDE drives to eliminate them entirely. Now it works perfectly!

Took me until freakin' 5am but I fixed it! YAY!