Hal.dll error during OS loader screen

[wakubi]

Hi,

Does anyone know what the following error message means:

OS Loader 4

Disk I/O Error Status= 00008000
%WinntRoot%\System32\hal.dll

please reinstall a copy of file

I work for a large corporation who want to replace every machine that gets this error.

The corporation dont understand the concecpt of 'fixing' broken PC's, for them it has to be either wipe it and reinstall (reimage) or replace it.
In this case their saying replace, but im thinking wipe.

Am I correct in thinking hal.dll is corrupt, or is this some kind of hardware error?

Any Ideas, solutions or hints most welcome,

Julian Kigwana
MCSE+I

 

[kjseever]

Are they all the same machine type? Maybe there was a bad batch of HDD's. You might try running diagnostics on one of the drives to see if there are any bad clusers on it. If not then I'd say reimage. There could also be a problem with the image and that machine type.

Hope this helps,

Kenny

 

[LOB]

Is the HD and/or the OS partition greater than 7.87G?
What was last thing done prior to error? SP install or adding a 2000 app with typical?
Asking because this is the issue dealing with Hal.dll I've seen and those were the most common creators of issue. Unless it is truly a corrupt file there is a chance it is fragmented with part of it being over 7.87G or all of it is. NT4 can't find it because until NT4 is ready it doesn't understand drives greater than 7.87G (post SP4). Depending on what year it was I would use either Winternals NTFSPRO or ERD Cmdr. Both will boot you into a DOS like environment that would allow you to copy, delete etc files on a NTFS partition from a DOS prompt.
I would create a directory and copy the offending file (hal.dll) to the new directory and then delete it from its current location and then copy it back. Copying it back over top of itself without the delete was NOT successful. Have yet to have it not work. Have also had to replace a few more files because hal.dll is not the only "lost" one. C_1252.nls, NTFS.sys & ntoskrnl.exe are particularly prone to this because they are read prior to NT4 getting the drive geometry right.
I have also found while doing this that the boot I/O error comes and goes depending on the files I'm fixing. Also, if after fixing the files you get the BSOD chances are it is the entire winnt\system32\drivers directory (just the files). So I have copied all the files to new directory and deleted and copied back and problems went away.
Again the response is based on my issues with W2K Apps and SP on NT4. Your results may vary.
Hope this helps.

 

[Guest_imported]

It sounds to me that during your model phase, the hal.dll file was copied from a bad sector on the model machine, and when you ghosted the other machines on the network the file emulated a bad sector at the new target machines during the model copy from the source machine. That is why your company want to replace all the machines. Replacing the hardware is not the problem, your problem is in your software model.

You may have to go back to your model image, fix the problem on another machine and recopy the OS to your target machines. Field test 10 machines on a network, and test for conflicts before you go full conversion.

Marvin_cool_jobs2000@yahoo.com