I apologize in advance for this lengthy description, and would like to thank anyone who takes the time to work through it!

I have an Acer Aspire T135...when I got the computer I repartitioned the 160GB SATA harddrive it came with, and threw in an 80GB IDE drive from my old computer for extra storage. I made the original hard drive two paritions, one for system files and OS, and the other for storage. I'm not sure why, but this is how those 2 disks (3 partitions) ended up looking on my system:
Disk 0 - Partition 1 - D: (Boot)
Disk 0 - Partition 2 - E: (Storage)
Disk 1 - C: (System)

To clear things up, Disk 1 is the 80GB of storage that I added... Windows was installed on the D drive. Furthermore, Disk 0 is a SATA disk, and Disk 1 is on the Master (end) connection of an IDE cable. I'm not sure why Disk 1 would be labeled C... I'm assuming that the way the cables are set up on the mobo that the IDE cable gets assigned drive letters first, which is why that disk took the C drive in the first place.

Here's where the problem starts... I now have a 3rd drive that I've been using as an external with an enclosure that I need to put internal. When I did so, I put it as a slave along with Disk 1 (and verified that they were master and slave in CMOS), but now when I go to start windows I get "Windows couldnt be started. File missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll" This file is with the windows OS on the D drive, but I'm thinking that by adding a 3rd hard drive on the IDE chain, that the new drive took the D drive letter and moved the SATA disk, (the boot disk) down the line of drive letters to E and F for the two partitions. That's my theory at least. I have messed around a little bit with CMOS and adjusting the Boot Disk Priority and even manually selecting a boot disk when windows starts, but it doesnt seem to work. Does anyone have a clue how I can rectify this without reinstalling Windows? Thanks a lot guys, and again, sorry for the wordiness!

Hi and Welcome to PCHF!

Try this to fix the hal.dll problem, then we can work on your other problem after that. Insert your Windows XP reinstal disk and go to start > run and type in "sfc /scannow". It should find any Windows files that are missing and restore them from the disk.

Good luck,
Adam

Adam, thanks for your quick response. Although I am getting that error message, the problem is not that the file is missing or corrupt, but rather that after the introduction of the additional hard drive, the system is looking for that file on the wrong disk. Without the 3rd hard drive plugged in I found the file on the D drive (D:\WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll). Everything works fine before I plug in that additional drive, but by adding that it must mess with the order of drive letter or indexing of drives and partitions. I'm sure part of the root of the problem is that the C drive (which is just simple additional storage) is being labeled the system drive, while D (which houses windows) is the boot drive. Also, to address the reinstall issue, I no longer have my XP disk... as if things weren't complicated enough to begin with!

Hmm, well.. do you have the pin set in the right place in the hard drive? You should set it as a slave. Most people have theirs set at cable select and that can get confusing so make sure that the slave is set as slave with the little pin in the hard drive and that the primary drive is set as master.

I havent done anything to the drive it came with (SATA). When I had just the second drive in there and everything worked fine it was on cable select and was located at the end of the IDE cable. Now I put the other drive in the middle of the IDE, set it to slave by removing the jumper and set the drive on the end to Master With Slave Present.

Hello ESchine,

My first question would be, did you format and delete the partitions on your 80 gig drive before starting this whole setup? If it was already assigned the C: drive and you didn't format when you installed windows on your new 160 gig drive, that would likely be the cause of the messed up letter assignments. If not, I can't think of any other way that happened. The drive letters are assigned according to what Windows is installed on. If there is already a drive with the letter C: present, it will call the new Windows installation D:. If all the drives were completely clean, I'm not sure how this happened. Drive letters aren't assigned according to their position in the device chain. Here is a link that explains what I think happened here Drive Letter Assignment and Choosing Primary vs. Logical Partitions

I know I am supposed to post only when I have a solution, but honestly in this case, I don't think you have any other choice but to format your drives and start from scratch. Windows will not let you reassign drive letters to either the system volume or the boot volume.

There may be a way to reassign drive letters outside of Windows with some sort of partitioning software like Partition Magic, but I haven't seen it myself. My advice would be to hang around and see if someone knows of this. I will pass it along to the technical staff in a few days if there is no response.

If you do end up starting completely over, I would suggest leaving all of your storage drives unplugged until you complete the Windows installation.

Hope any of that info helps you.