Power eraser

Hello, I tried Power eraser with the root kit scan option enabled it instructed me to reboot to safe mode so I did.

The problem my system doesn't load the modem  drives in safe mode so the scan was not completed I rebooted

and my system reported hal.dll was missing or corrupt.

I rebooted again pressing F8 and found a new entry in my boot menu "WINDOWS (DEFAULT)" choosing that line always results in the hal error the other two lines are fine I can bootup no problem regular Windows XP and windows recovery console.

I know about MSCONFIG and STARTUP AND RECOVERY the line for this  "WINDOWS (DEFAULT)"  just is not in BOOT.INI file I've even unhidden system files.

How do I get rid of it and set the default boot order back to the way it was before I tried NPE?

If it matters I also tried Norton security scan but cancelled it because there's no way my dialup provider will let me keep a connection long enough to download a 133 meg dat file.