Problems repairing XpPro with no CD Drive

[Kyle]

I have an XP Pro laptop which has become corrupt, with the system32\hall.dll is missing or corrupt. It is a Toshiba laptop which has a CD Rom drive hanging off a PCMIA card. The CD Drive is not compatible witht the BIOS so does not support booting from CD. I tried to boot from the XP 6 set floppy disks but every time i get to disc 6 it blue screens ( i have tried various floppies of disc 6 to no luck)

The HDD is formatted NTFS and had two identical partitions. I was trying to access the i386 folder on the D: partition to try to do a re-install of the OS (which i thought would be my quickest option) But i cant find NT boot floppies to let me access the d: partition in a DOS style.

I am stumped, this is for a friend which the laptop is to be used for home use. He said the systen32\hall.dll error came after a 90% install of IE7 but he had a power cut and this happened when he turned it back on.

Can anyone help me with this please?

[ChrisH]

Either start the setup from the xp disc and select repair or use somthing like KNoppix or bart PE top access the files. You can also google how to create a boot disc.

[dezt]

How about NTFSDos, i think that's what it's called, you can boot from the disk with read and execute permissions but not write permissions. Should be ok if you just need to run setup from your d: partition.

try this link for ntfsdos. sysinternals ntfsdos free version

dezt.

[Kyle]

@ChrisH

I cant use the CD DRive?

[Kyle]

Right

I can now access the ntfs partitions, but when i try to run winnt.exe i get this error "could not find place for swap file"

and th einstall stops.

[ChrisH]

If your trying a repair then you should boot off the CD and select repair.

Edit: Note to self read the post carefully

[mac_shinobi]

find toshiba laptop make n model then see if there are any bios updates to rectify this issue, if not contact toshiba

[ChrisH]

Sorry about harping on about the cd drive didnt read the title properly :P It times like these you appreciate your USB CD drive.

[mac_shinobi]

nice emote, I wonder if doing that actually has any side effects ? LOL