Bad Hard Drive

[hadjiandbuck]

I'm hoping someone here can help me here. Yesterday I encountered this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

I followed the steps on this thread: http://forums.legitreviews.com/about6705-20.html

Nothing worked until I reinstalled Windows XP in a new WINXP folder leaving the original Windows folder alone. I copied over the hal.dll file and my computer almost booted up completely but right after it showed the WindowsXP logo with the black screen before my desktop would appear the system rebooted itself. I ran a copy of Spinrite I have and it showed that I had some bad (unrecoverable) clusters on the hard drive at the very start of the emergency recovery scan (in the Windows folder I take it). So I have a dying hard drive. My question is is there some way I can move certain files/folders from the WINXP folder to the original Windows folder to get my system up and running again. That way I can uninstall a few specific programs so I can reinstall them on another PC? I was thinking about saving off the old system32 file and then replacing it with the new system32 file and hope I get lucky.

Additionally, I have a second Maxtor hard drive (drives E: and F:) on this PC that I would want to keep and not mess with. Can I keep this secondary drive in place after I get a new hard drive for the OS and install WindowsXP on the new one? Are there any special procedures? Any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[bubba]

If the drive is dieing then the best thing to do is slave the drive into another machine OR Linux live disk of some flavor and back up the files you are needing.

With a dieing disk time is of the essence, so sooner is better and the more you mess with the grater the likely hood it up and dies completely and you get nothing off the disk.

[hadjiandbuck]

Thanks Bubba! Can I leave the secondary drive as is and then have the new hard drive "find it" when I install it and re-install XP? Thanks again!

[Skippman]

If you're refering to keeping the Maxtor slave in the machine and replacing the defective drive with a new one set to master then yes, you can leave the Maxtor in place.

If the drive your wanting to make slave is your current boot drive then no. What you will need to do is install a new HD, jumper it for Master and install Windows. Once Windows is installed, reattach the dieing hard drive making sure that the jumper is set to slave.

[hadjiandbuck]

Thanks Skippman!

UPDATE: I went ahead and copied over the entire System32 file from WINXP to the original Windows file..... and it worked. The desktop settings were off but I was able to adjust that and started making sure I could save off anything I hadn't yet on the Maxtor slave drive. I tried to uninstall a program that is associated with this PC but I couldn't since it said Windows uninstall program was not responding. I am thinking of taking a system32 file from a WinXP SP3 (the one I did was SP1) and copying that over and see how it does..... will let you know how it goes.

Thanks to everyone for helping!