Recently I bought a Dell Latitude CPx H500GT laptop and I had a windows home edition upgrade disc. So I put in the CD and clicked install Windows XP, and it all started doing it's thing and it came to a blue screen asking a few options for my upgrade and it said I could overwrite the old version of Windows (98 SE) so I did that and when it had finished everythng I turned it off but when I try to turn it back on it says that (word for word):
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.
Now how am I supposed to fix this if I can't access the CD from the laptop?
Specs:
Microprocessorentium III-500
RAM:128MB
Video Memory:8MB
HDD: 11GB
OS: Windows 98 SE/ Windows XP
Any help appreciated,
George

Hi there, is the CD Bootable?

What do you mean by bootable?

He means can you boot the PC from the disk.

Try going into BIOS upon startup and change the BOOT order for your devices.
The CD-rom drive should be at the top which allows you to boot from the XP cd.
Exit bios and don't forget to save. Once the disk has been recognized, press any key to boot fromt he cd.

Thanks for your help but it was slightly late..I got the problem solved about 3 weeks ago
George

You should have informed us after you got it fixed. But anyway, a mod can now mark this thread as resolved.