Monthly Archives: November 2006

Troubleshooting

hal.dll Is Missing

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I’ve had this issue almost as many times as I’ve had the NTLDR issue. So I decided to be a great guy and explain how I fix(ed) it.

Here’s the error: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file.

1.) Boot off your Windows XP Disk
2.) If you require a HD driver (if you use SATA for example) make sure you have a floppy of the SATA drivers handy – you will need it.
3.) After the setup finishes loading, press R for repair.
4.) A recovery console will appear, select the installation of Windows you want to repair (usually C:\Windows)
5.) Type in your administrator password. In most cases this is actually blank.
6.) Type BootCfg /Rebuild (this will take a while, select the option ALL).
7.) You will have to select a few options here if you have more than one Windows bootable drive. ALL usually works just fine.
8.) Enter Load Identifier shows up. Type in something you’ll remember (I usually type TESTing)
9.) Enter Operating System Load Options shows up. Type /fastdetect

10.) Type exit. You should be done.

Linux

Installing NANO instead of PICO

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This is a Linux type issue, so if you use Windows you need not read. I love having simple text editors. Who likes knowing how to exit out of VI or how to get the menus to work on emacs? And who has even heard of, let alone used, ee?

I grew up on PICO. Pico comes with most basic installations of Linux because it’s packaged with PINE (the email client). Pico gets the job done whenever I’ve needed it. I like using EE more, but it’s also harder to find on every system (FreeBSD is great). Enough buzz words? OK, on to the meat of the article.

Since no one likes to install extra software (you need to install PINE in order to get PICO on a system), I found a program called NANO. Here’s the simple steps to get it to install:

Oh, be warned that it requires at least a simple C+ compiler (oops).

Open up a terminal session.
type “wget http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v1.2/nano-1.2.5.tar.gz” without the quotes
cd to the directory you downloaded the tar.gz to.
type “gtar xvvzf nano-1.2.5.tar.gz” without the quotes.
cd into the nano-1.2.5 directory.
type “./configure” without the quotes – this will tell you if there are any problems before compiling the program.
type “make install” without the quotes – this will actually install the required files into sbin and usr directories.
after the installation is finished, you can type “nano” or “nano {filename}” and run this very simple text editor.