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You Guys are unreal for the quick response thanks a million.

I'm downloading memtest to my laptop as I type.

I opened up the desktop and reseated the hard drive, the spin-up noises have stopped and it's allowed to get to the point of installing XP I'm being asked to select a drive to install it to. The problem now is its saying it'll have to format the partition and thus deleting all the files on the hard disc which is exactly what I dont want to do. I gone back a step to the repair function hoping it would recognise the missing DLL and insert it but that doesnt seem to be the case!

boot from the cd again and look for the option of Recovery console

when you see it hit the button to select it

You will get a black screen with a A:

type fixboot and hit enter

reboot and see if windows works

if it does not follow the same steps only this time type fixmbr hit enter reboot and see if windows loads

If you have more than one drive you can install windows to the second drive and you should get a dual boot system with your broken system intact so you can recover the files. As long as your drives are formatted you can just leave them intact and install to them

Hi again
I've got a c prompt if thats a dif. Fix boot worked but doesn't seem to have affected anything I went back to boot from HD and just for the original message ore the missing dll. I tried fixmbr but I exited from it concerned with the message telling that proceedingmay affect the data on the drive.

follow joeys method then for a repair install. The fixmbr command ive never known lose data for me however I will not say it cant happen so its upto you

d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll .you could try this command. D needs to be your cd drive if not change it . This is done in recovery console

might be this command: expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll

lets us know how its going...

Hi guys,

Sorry for the delay in getting back. I had to knuckle down to Uni work and trying to get this machine up and running was taking up too much time.
The position is the same I cant boot up the machine past the error message. The spin up noises on the hard-drive were getting worse so I opened up the case and reseated the drive and that resolved that issue at least.
I did get the xp install to the stage were it was asking to partition the drive but that would have wiped everything, trying to avoid that option. I tried getting into safe mode & last known good config but again to no avail. I'm wondering if its possible to load the XP disc onto my laptop search it for the missing dll, copy it and somehow get it onto the my desktop? But I cant see that working either.
As I said earlier I tried fixboot but with no success but avoided Fixmbr as it warned it may cause files to be lost.
I'm fairly okay when it comes to the hardware side and have no qualms taking a machine apart but when it comes to the OS I'm stumped. Not entirely sure where to go with it next. But I appriciate all the assists

Newdeafman