conceptumator
Technical User
I did a clean install (I thought) of XP Pro and kept getting a message saying that hal.dll was missing or corrupted when the machine rebooted following the file copy. Hint to save you some time if this happens to you: The problem was due to the fact the drive I was installing on (althought I had deleted the partition during XP setup) had Seagate DDO (Dynamic Disk Overlay) running. You will need to do a low level format or otherwise remove DDO before installing XP. A utility to do this is on Seagate's website, but you have to really look for it. If you find the page to download the DiskManager software, look for the utility indicated for creating a bootable disk for new computer setups. This utility gives the option of Low Level Format or just DDO removal; to be safe, I did both and continued XP install without a hitch.
