BC setup - XP Hal.dll frustration

[caseys]

Hi all,

I've been reading the numerous threads on the hal.dll issue some people seem to have when creating a bootcamp partition for XP. I seem to be one of those people having the issues, but I have tried the following with zero success so far :

BC asssitant - Create a partition < 32Gb, reboot and install OEM XP SP2 disk on it. Get hal.dll issue
BC assistant - Create a partition < 32Gb, reboot and reformat the partition in the XP setup - tried both NTFS and FAT32, both quick and slow formats. Get hal.dll issue.

Edit : I should point out that to do the format I have found I have to delete the BOOTCAMP partition and then reformat the unpartitioned space (which includes the xxxMb unused). I recall that there is normally a way to format before installation on a chosen partition but my OEM disk doesn't seem to include the option as per the bootcamp setup pdf?

Found a XP2 Pro upgrade disk which had recovery console, went into that and deleted the boot.ini file and did a bootcfg /rebuild and a fixboot. still didn't work.

I've looked on the net and mainly issues I've found are from when 10.4 was using the bootcamp beta. I'm running bootcamp assistant 2.0 on Leopard, fully patched on a MP 2008.

Any advice please?

 

[neilhart]

I don't know if any of this will help.

From personal experience hacking XP systems, you can create or resolve this "hal.dll not found issue" by changing the boot parititon id in the boot.ini file.

"hal.dll not found" error message is somewhat good error message. It means that the system found MS Windows and started loading, then read the boot.ini file and found that it points to the wrong partition.

On Intel MACs where BootCamp Assistant is used to create the windows partition, the windows partition is normally the third partition on the drive (EFI, OSX, Windows).

The kicker most times if finding a way to edit the boot.ini (or even view the partitions). The file is hidden and is a system file. You can change the attributes and edit the file with about any text editor. This is easy if you are in a fat32 format.

The contents of the boot.ini on this PC are:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Windows is installed on "partition(1)". On my UMBP, Windows is the "partition(3)".

Again, I hope that this helps.
Neil

 

[caseys]

I don't know if any of this will help.

From personal experience hacking XP systems, you can create or resolve this "hal.dll not found issue" by changing the boot parititon id in the boot.ini file.

"hal.dll not found" error message is somewhat good error message. It means that the system found MS Windows and started loading, then read the boot.ini file and found that it points to the wrong partition.

On Intel MACs where BootCamp Assistant is used to create the windows partition, the windows partition is normally the third partition on the drive (EFI, OSX, Windows).

The kicker most times if finding a way to edit the boot.ini (or even view the partitions). The file is hidden and is a system file. You can change the attributes and edit the file with about any text editor. This is easy if you are in a fat32 format.

The contents of the boot.ini on this PC are:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Windows is installed on "partition(1)". On my UMBP, Windows is the "partition(3)".

Again, I hope that this helps.
Neil

Hi,

Thanks for the info, yes it does look like this is my issue, as my bootcamp partition is partition 3 and I guess the boot.ini file is not pointing to it.

It doesn't seem like there's any way i can change the partition ID from the recovery console Unless someone can correct me?

 

[caseys]

Does anyone know how I can change the boot.ini file? Setup gets so far loading files then goes for it's first restart and of course doesn't load. I've even got a boot.ini file I can use.. but don't seem to find any way of replacing the file with partition(1) instead of partition(3)

I can't mount the bootcamp partition in OSX... I've managed to get it to install XP Pro x64 fine but can't get the drivers on there for my airport card

Does microsoft have anywhere where you can download an updated ISO for a bootable XP Pro with SP2 on it? I have a genuine disk + license!

 

[Matek]

Does microsoft have anywhere where you can download an updated ISO for a bootable XP Pro with SP2 on it? I have a genuine disk + license!

If you own a legal copy, it's not a great sin to download an updated ISO from a.. ahem.. torrent site.