HAL.DLL_____AAAAARGH!!!

[Stevie_x_Tattoo_Artist]

I have a problem: when I boot my pc it says <windows root>\SYSTEM32\Hal.dll is missing or corrupt.
My setup:

Removable boot drive 1 - 10gb FAT 32 windows 98 2nd edition
Removable boot drive 2 - 20gb NTFS windows xp professional

Fixed data drive - 120gb NTFS

If I insert my Windows 98 Setup disk and boot drive 1, pc boots normally. If I just insert boot drive 1 all I get is the error message!!!!

[Creodus]

can you boot into Safe Mode?
Can you run scanreg.exe and scandisk.exe from your Windows 98 start disk?
Sometimes scanreg/scandisk will fix this issue - often caused by removing certain software - Norton is often a culprit and has damaged many a 98 system of mine.

You can also download the file and copy to the System32 directory at the dos prompt.  Again this doesn't always work but has for me in the past. Here's a link:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

Only other option I can offer is a reformat of that drive and re-install.

good luck  http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':blink:\' />