I had to replace my hard drive in a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. It originally had a 60GB and 160 is the smallest I can buy, now. The computer can only handle 120GB partitions, so I partitioned a 60 GB to restore to and the remainder as a second partition. I have tried restoring my drive after formating the hard drive and loading Windows, then tried reformating and restoring without loading Windows and each time I am getting the "hal.dll" is missing or corrupt error. I tried using the Windows CD to repair, but it wants my Administrator password which I can't remember and I can't get booted to see my password hint.
I have read that if there is a problem with partitioning that I could get this error???
Is there a way to rebuild the Boot.ini without the Windows CD?
Is there a way to repair the Hall.dll without the Windows CD?Other suggestions???