I am getting so sick of this problem!

[ITDEFX]

still having this problem from a few months ago, but here is a recap

back in Sept 2005 I bought a SATA 300 gig Maxtor drive from compusa for 150..they had the same drive and space but ATA mode, but I decided to try sata ..mistake 1.

got really busy and didn't install it til week 3.. mistake 2

hooked it to my onboard sata connector on my MB.. after a few tries, XP finally picked it up, but XP professional kept on locking up on boot giving me a hal.dll is missing when ever the drive is attached.

In dec 2005 I bought an SATA card from compusa in NYC (since there wasn't a cheaper card aroudn my location.

Installed the card, XP home picked it up, but same problem with XP Pro, missing Hal.dll

I tried some ideas from fellow cagers but I fucked up now I have 4 boot options instead of 2 (HOME/PRO), but thats no biggy

I finally bought an SATA external enclosure that supports USB/Firewire/SATA connections..

Couldn't get the SATA connector to work, but I did get the firewire up and running...did a file copy test...way too slow...

After fucking around with the jumpers on the SATA card, I finally got the SATA drive to pick up (yay) under XP home, but when I booted to xp pro, same problem Missing/corrupt hal.dll :(

I spent 70 bucks on an enclosure and im still having the missing hal.dll problem for xp pro..... now i checked and hal.dll is defently installed..

now without reformating and reinstalling windows pro/home just for this problem and not fucking up my boot options, any ideas on what to do next?

[Moxio]

Seems like someone else has a problem with the same hard drive.

There's a few answers/solutions. Check it out.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11184-0.html?forumID=48&threadID=184475

[Vinny]

I bought a SATA 300 gig Maxtor drive

Mistake 1... Maxtor sucks.

Smartass comments aside, why are you dual booting Win XP Home and Pro? They're pretty much the same thing.

[ITDEFX]

Mistake 1... Maxtor sucks.

Smartass comments aside, why are you dual booting Win XP Home and Pro? They're pretty much the same thing.


ha, thats what the microcenter tech asked...suspiously i might add... none of his fucken business why i have a dual boot , its my system if i want to have xp, unix , and window 3.11 when i can do it damn it hehe..

anyways, im using dual boot because i want xp home for games/internet stuff and xp home for work stuff (photoshop, after effects, premiere, illustrator , maya, encoring and so on) xp pro seems more efficant for my graphics stuff and boots extremly fast.

maxtor doesn't suck..... i have had no problems with there drives, unlike those cheap piece of shits called western digitals.

[Moxio]

ITDEFX did my link help? If not I'll look for more answers.

[Vinny]

ha, thats what the microcenter tech asked...suspiously i might add... none of his fucken business why i have a dual boot , its my system if i want to have xp, unix , and window 3.11 when i can do it damn it hehe..

anyways, im using dual boot because i want xp home for games/internet stuff and xp home for work stuff (photoshop, after effects, premiere, illustrator , maya, encoring and so on) xp pro seems more efficant for my graphics stuff and boots extremly fast.

maxtor doesn't suck..... i have had no problems with there drives, unlike those cheap piece of shits called western digitals.

To each his own I guess... I'm a Seagate man myself.:)

Anyways, googling 'hal.dll' turns up a bunch of results. Seems as if it's a common problems. But this one seems to fit your description well: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm.

[gokou36]

I bought a SATA 300gig Maxtor last month too. Hooked it up, installed XP Pro fine. Next day when I tried to reboot, it froze on me. So I formatted and tried to reinstall again, same thing happened. I returned it and got a Seagate and everything worked fine.


Have you tried Maxtor's technical support?

[ITDEFX]

just to be on the safe side i will tell you what my set up is like because there are very little information on setups with more than 1 drive.

C: 80 gigs Windows XP Home
D: 60 gig WIndows XP Pro
E: 200 gig -stuff
F: DVD burner
G: SATA 300 gig drive (inactive atm)

Drives C-F are all internal IDEs. G varies if its connected via the SATA card or inactive because i can't boot it to Xp Pro :(

[ITDEFX]

ok i fixed the boot.ini problem

i did a test with another spare hard drive in which i installed xp pro, i hit F6 to install the 3rd party drivers to install the SATA card drivers on a floppy (had to transfer them from the CD). Completed the install, and it worked... xp pro booted up on that drive no problem and read the SATA drive so no hal.dll errors.

Now I took out that spare drive and set it back to normal. Looks like I am going to have to reinstall XP pro . I have found instructions here
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/pcrepair/a/reinstallxp.htm

however although I have the xp pro disc, I can't find the product CD key :O the system was built by me and the last time i installed the OS was like 2 years ago. I saw somewhere on PCMag.com they had a ultility that can read the product activation key from within windows, but I can't find it (saw it last year). does anyone know where i can get the reader from?

thanks

[poe]

If you can navigate the registry, there's a walkthrough here (http://v2.tlab404.com/articles/detail.asp?iFaq=272&iType=20) for looking it up yourself. Also, here's a program called Keyfinder (http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml).

[bmulligan]

Mistake 1... Maxtor sucks.

Smartass comments aside, why are you dual booting Win XP Home and Pro? They're pretty much the same thing.

I think the question needs repeating. Isn't XP home just a dumbed down version of Pro (meaning less built-in features ) ? Other than the extra features, it's the same OS.

[Vinny]

I think the question needs repeating. Isn't XP home just a dumbed down version of Pro (meaning less built-in features ) ? Other than the extra features, it's the same OS.

I think Pro's advantage is more networking features built-in but those are for business purposes.

But a lot of people claim that XP Pro runs smoother, which I can understand since MS borrowed more from 2000 for Pro than they did for Home.

[ITDEFX]

I think Pro's advantage is more networking features built-in but those are for business purposes.

But a lot of people claim that XP Pro runs smoother, which I can understand since MS borrowed more from 2000 for Pro than they did for Home.

i totally agree, xp pro runs very smoothly with from what i experianced, no instiblity problems, with the exception of my ADS Pyro box that tends to get pissy and reboot/lock my system from time to time..but other than that, extremly fast boot. Very effificant when i have a lot of graphics work to do and everything runs fast. Home is for gaming and internet surfing and Pro is for work stuff.

UPDATE: Ok I downloaded the keyfinder program and got that data, thanks :) a first for me, I reinstalled xp pro over xp pro and it worked, but i have to reinstall the drivers and my programs but no biggy, thank god i didn't have to format the drive :O Best of all that SATA drive now works in Pro! yay!! no more stupid hal.dll errors. when the price goes down i can buy that 500 gig sata drive :P

I wonder if i can reenable my installed programs or do i have to reinstall them into pro? they haven't been deleted and it would be nice to get them back up without the pain of reinstalling them.

thanks guys! :)

[ITDEFX]

ok, new new update:

5/27/06 21:35:

rebooted because of the xp pro updates, typed my message here, then went back to xp pro, guess what? SAME FUCKEN HAL.DLL ERROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF ??? it worked perfectly in pro mode and it even saw the drive in explorer, i haven't changed anything now it wont let me go to pro unless i yank the drive out. arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[hero101]

That it, I'm going to stick to Seagate hard drives, Maxtor is too noisy for an external hard drive.:cry:

[ITDEFX]

That it, I'm going to stick to Seagate hard drives, Maxtor is too noisy for an external hard drive.:cry:

maxtors aren't bad.. but they tend to get kinda hot. The only exception is maxtor sata drives and XP pro, they dont like each other :( I really feel like throwing this drive out the window... i spent 150 bucks on it and its useless for xp pro :(

im thinking of sticking to ATA drives......no problems with them.

[ITDEFX]

update

i went into bios after i connected the SATA drive to the MB and installed the drivers, then told bios NOT to detect any SATA drives... restarted went to XP pro, boot up no problem, then i checked the drives, the SATA Drive is read under xp pro......... yay! but get this...now it doesn't read under xp home any more lol. it would be nice to have it under both OS's but at this point as long as it reads under Xp Pro, where i need it the most, then i am happy with it :)

now watch, when i reboot i will get a hal.dll


i hate my life lol

[ITDEFX]

now here is a kick in the face if i were to have one. With all these power outages my bios did a checksum error and reverted to default bios settings. everything checked out so i went back to xp pro, then BAM! Hal.dll error. so i went into bios again and decided to take a wild guess and disabled onboard SATA even though the SATA drive is connected to the onboard SATA connector. Rebooted to XP Pro, and guess what? XP PRO did NOT have the hal.dll error. Went back to XP Home, and now the drive is picked up. So now i have the drive avalible for use under home and Pro.

intresting how this shouldn't have worked, and it did.