Frusterated

Mirewen

Mirewen

Cloud 9
Adventurer
Joined
Mar 9, 2005
Messages
4,206
Location
British Columbia
Main Job
BlackMage-Female
Secondary Job
RedMage-Female
Third Job
Bard-Female
FFXIV
Mirewen
So last night when I got home, I turned on my computer and started playing. I was in the middle of a conversation when my screen went "funny". Imagine your desktop image flattened and elongated then multiplied by 1000. A whole bunch of fragments that look like a wallpaper. No start menu, no mouse, no nothing. So I press the power button, ctrl+alt+delete did nothing. It starts up again, I am on for no longer than 1 minute and it happens again. I don't want to get frustrated so I turn it off for 30 minutes. I go back after watching tv and when I start up I get a DOS screen that says something to the effect of "We are sorry for the inconvenience but your laptop was not turned off correctly (blahblahblah), if it shut down unexpectedly or there was a power out, choose "Start windows with the last working setting" if you turned it off manually, choose "Start windows normally"". There are also two other options, 3 different kinds of safe mode. Ok, I choose "Start windows normally" because I manually turned it off. I wait for a moment. The "Windows XP" comes up with the load bar, 10% in it restarts itself. . . back to the DOS screen, same 5 options.

So I try "Start windows with the last working setting". I wait for a moment. The "Windows XP" comes up with the load bar, 10% in it restarts itself. Ok people who know me know that I have a pretty bad temper when it comes to things I can't fix. Rather than smash the computer with my fist, I decide to call a couple friends. After trying and retrying, I phone HP. The company I got it through. The gentleman informs me that my warranty has expired 16 days ago and he won't even offer any advice. He does, however, let me know that I can buy a new warranty for $529.00. . . So I go through all the reading material I got with my computer. There is an option to press F11 and rebuild the computer. I think, "I don't care I just want my computer to work again" so I do it. Takes ~50 minutes to process and right when it finishes, I get a little computer icon with a magnifying glass circling around it. Then, BAM. The lovely fragmented screen again. I have no choice but to press the power button, yet again. I try F11 again and 1/2 way through the process, fragmented.

I turn off the computer and decide to just give up and go to sleep. I wake up this morning and get the lovely "Sorry to inconvenience you" DOS screen again. But this time, on the bottom, it says "You must install <windows root>\system32\hal.dll." Ok, what the hell is that? My computer came with 0 disks. It was ordered through BestBuy. The only thing I got with it was a fold out that said "1. Plug in your computer, 2. Power on, 3. Follow the instructions provided on your desktop." That's it. No nothing. So now, I'm sitting at work wondering what the fuck to do, I have no car and I have no freaking clue where any fix it stores are and even if it is fixable.

I use my computer to talk to my sister in Wales, my aunt in Australia, my cousins in Saskatoon. I play games on it, It has my email on it. I talk to my friends on Yahoo or Vent. I seriously don't know what to do. Atleast I still have FFXI on my PS2 so I downloaded all of the updates, but if anyone has any assistance they can offer... please.
 
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Didn't your last computer screw up like RIGHT after the warranty expired too? ; ;

I'm not as good with computers as some of the other folks on here, so I'm not gonna try to give you advice as it will probably not be all that useful anyways.

Sorry your computer broked ; ;
 
My last computer was a Dell and the LCD screen cracked and started leaking about 2-3 months after I got it. I had an extended warranty but they said the screen wasn't part of the computer so they refused to fix it.
 
My job provides my laptop for me, I don't even know how to crack the damn thing open! Really sorry to hear about what happened though. I will definitely take care if I ever buy a PC or laptop from Best Buy to make sure I recieve all of the loading and reboot discs though.
 
Well that doesn't sound like a single issue. With the Windows repeatedly rebooting, I was thinking bad RAM, with the distortion of picture, bad graphics card, then when you said BestBuy, I was thinking bad computer all together lol

Try swapping RAM if you have any to see if the computer will at least boot up.

As far as the hal.dll I think that is part of SP2. Try browsing to root/system32 or root/ServicePackFiles/i386 to see if the file is there.
 
Yeah, hal.dll is the file windows uses to talk to your hardware, which either points to it being a hardware issue like I suggested yesterday or the file magically getting corrupted, which oddly enough seems to happen very often. Most people who repair it do so using a boot disc and repairing it from there, but since you don't have one that could be a problem. Here's what I suggest doing:

1) Obtain a boot disc. Any working copy of XP should be able to burn off a boot disc assuming it has a CD/DVD burner. You should match the copy you have (Home, Pro, whatever) if you can. If you can't find someone locally who can make you one I could make one for you. Pop that in your laptop and boot from the CD and then I can call and walk you through how to repair the hal.dll and boot.ini files.

2) If that doesn't work (either fixing the file doesn't fix the problem or if you can't even get a boot CD to boot the laptop up) then it's probably more on the hardware side and should be taken to a pc repair place (worst case most Best Buy stores have one but it'd be better to find a store that specializes in repair only). With this option, be sure to tell them to only do a diagnostic and NOT to attempt ANY repairs without contacting you first.
 
Mirewen said:
My last computer was a Dell and the LCD screen cracked and started leaking about 2-3 months after I got it. I had an extended warranty but they said the screen wasn't part of the computer so they refused to fix it.
Click to expand...

For PCs they (DELL) don't cover the monitor, but for laptops, I've had my LCD screen replaced twice under warranty.

I had the hal.dll problem which the techs at Dell swore was a Trojan (it wasn't). The fix was to replace my hard drive. It wasn't a RAM issue because the laptop has RAM built into the motherboard. This actually started happening after I dropped the laptop, so if you dropped it that is probably the issue. If you have important stuff on your hard drive, you can buy one of those USB cables that connects to laptop hard drives and read your hard drive from a different PC.
 
Arianelle said:
For PCs they (DELL) don't cover the monitor, but for laptops, I've had my LCD screen replaced twice under warranty.
Click to expand...

Then the guy I talked to was a douche because he said it didn't count as part of the computer.
 
Arianelle said:
I had the hal.dll problem which the techs at Dell swore was a Trojan (it wasn't). The fix was to replace my hard drive.
Click to expand...

I have seen scenarios similiar to yours on both PC's and Laptops. It almost always is the hard drive going bad. It's tricky too, because I have seen units come through with this problem and swore it was the hard drive. I'd run reliable hard drive tests that would come back clean, so I would just reload and move on, only to have the hard drive completely fail a month later. I'm not sure what the specific problem is, but it is subtle enough to elude diagnostics (at least at first), but will not run an OS reliably.

Good news is, a hard drive in a laptop is a very easy thing to replace. You will need to get a set of restore CDs however.
 
Yeah that whole Restore CD issue... I don't know how HP is about sending them to you, but Dell pretty much sends them everytime you ask. Since it was purchased from Best Buy, they may send you to them. Otherwise, you can get your OS from somewhere and just download your drivers from the HP website.
 
I hope so. The dude I called (I'm bringing it to him on Saturday) said if it's a HD problem he can fix it but if it's a MB problem... I'm fucked.

Until I moved out of my dad's house, we only had Mac's. The only time we got rid of them was when my dad saw a different one he wanted. None of them ever crashed. This is depressing -.-
 
Mirewen said:
Then the guy I talked to was a douche because he said it didn't count as part of the computer.
Click to expand...

Douchey or not, but he's technically right. You don't need a monitor to run a computer.

If the whole Windows thing shits the bed, you can always install Linux, get the VMWare player for absolutely free, setup a virtual machine, load Windows in that, and have fun. That's the hardcore route though, and I wouldn't really recommend.

I've heard of but never actually seen this HAL.dll error. As for that, sounds like your graphics card's software may have shit the bed? IDK, I don't have enough info to make that educated of a guess.

I'd take Rappa's advice and get a WinXP boot CD. You should actually be able to nab one for burn online, if memory serves me correctly.

Arianelle said:
They even sent a tech to my house to replace it
Click to expand...
Dell Gold Support kicks ass.


Good luck Mire, hope it all turns out OK.
 
Well when I plugged the Dell laptop into my mothers monitor it still didn't work so technically there was something wrong with the actual computer to make the screen crack (probably fried something). The guy was just a jerk.
 
Mirewen said:
Well when I plugged the Dell laptop into my mothers monitor it still didn't work so technically there was something wrong with the actual computer to make the screen crack (probably fried something). The guy was just a jerk.
Click to expand...

No dispute there; a lot of folks at Best Buy are :D

Your computer physically harmed your monitor though? Damn, new one on me there :\
 
Are hal.dll universal for each version of WinXP? If so, I could always upload the file for you Mire.
 
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