Missing Windows folder

[RoyG]

Our Finance Manager fired up his PC this morning - "missing or corrupt hal.dll". It was working fine last night.

 

Booted from a stick - DIR - NO WINDOWS FOLDER!!

 

Anyone got any ideas on this one?

 

RoyG

[PEO]

Is it xp

 

Missing windows folder?

 

So you can't even boot in to safe mode?

 

If you could boot into safe mode you could have done either restore to previous point or "sfc /scannow" to repair any missing/corrupt .dll files.

 

As long as there is no work saved on the machine you culd try installing xp with out formating the drive. I havent tried it but i've heard it should leave all programs previously installed alone. I would double check on that though

[PEO]

here you go http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

[richard.thomas]

I've had the "missing or corrupt hal.dll" error before. I booted up using ultimate recovery disc (which is basically a live version of windows) backed up all the users documents then reinstalled xp... But there was a windows dir when I did it, as I was going to just copy the hal.dll off another machine.

[ricki]

I know this will sound silly but the computer does not have an extra partition or drive in it does it and somebody has install the os on the other drive.

 

Richard

[RoyG]

I know this will sound silly but the computer does not have an extra partition or drive in it does it and somebody has install the os on the other drive.

 

Richard

 

Not so silly - I did once have a batch of Asus machines that insisted on installing to E:. But not this one!

 

It's no big deal - I've reinstalled XP OK - but am just puzzled about a complete windows folder disappearing!

 

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

RoyG

[ricki]

I have had a few more ideas but they are only ideas.

 

1 Do teachers have admin rights or passwords. I have had teachers delete folders to make space as its not theres and it a large one its an easy target.

 

2 Have you had a kid spot your admin password. Kids love destroying things

 

3 Have you had anything come up about psexec in sophos. Has someone created a script that would run remotely and deleted it.

 

4 Have you had any more viruses.

 

5 Have you checked the condition of the drive. If part of the drive was corrupt in the fat the folder could disappear.

 

Only ideas

 

Richard

[craiglay]

I get this quite often on my Elonex machines. Normally means the drive is about to fail. Did you FULL format it when reinstalling?

 

Craig

[RoyG]

I get this quite often on my Elonex machines. Normally means the drive is about to fail. Did you FULL format it when reinstalling?

 

Craig

 

Yep - sure did!!

 

Merry Christmas everyone - I'm off home till next year!

 

RoyG