"donkee" <donkee@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:78E7FF1B-9507-4539-80A7-914C0A2DAE2C@microsoft.com...
>I fixed it, well not exactly the way i wanted it. It turns out that there
>is
> something wrong with the new hard drive because I took out an old 6 gig
> hard
> drive from an old system and connected it to the new system and lo and
> behold
> no missing/corrupt hal.dll messages nor had i had to change any boot.ini
> files. The installation of xp home is running smoothly as I type this
> message.
>
> Question is, it is a brand new Seagate 200 gig hard drive that is causing
> these problems right? That is a big dissapointment maybe its a new hard
> drive
> that i had to prepare it for installation? I thought that formatting it
> would
> be fine but i still got the hal.dll message after formatting it
> completely!
>
> I now have xp home running fine on a 6 gig hard drive=( Is there anything
> I
> should know about before going for a exchange? anything I can do to the
> 200gig hard drive to make it work?
>
> Thanks for any suggestions


donkee:
If I correctly understand your problem, it seems that for one reason or
another you could not install a viable copy of the XP operating system on
your new Seagate 200 GB HD. When you boot to that drive you get the "missing
hal.dll" message and you can't access the OS. Is that the gist of your
problem?

If so, my guess (and it's only a guess!) at this point is that your problem
is not due to a defective HD. It's possible, of course, but from your
description of the problem I don't see it as a defective HD, at least not
yet. It sounds to me like a faulty installation of XP.

In a previous posting, you stated "i formatted my hard drive clean". I
assume from this that you undertook a partitioning/formatting process prior
to the installation of the OS. This is unnecessary & undesirable in nearly
every case. Is there any reason why you would not use the XP installation CD
to install the OS and at the same time partition & format your drive during
the installation process?

Have you tried to reinstall the OS in a straightforward manner simply using
the XP installation media? This time, of course, it will be necessary to
delete whatever partition(s) have been previously created. But that too, is
simple enough to do during the install process.

Naturally you're certain that your Seagate is correctly connected and
configured, right?

If you still have qualms about whether your Seagate HD is defective,
download their diagnostic utility from
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ and test the drive.
Anna