My gf's Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop tries to boot, but it stalls before it ever gets to the Windows XP screen. The bar looks almost done, like 90% but it just won't go all the way. I tried hitting F12 to start in Safe Mode but it won't go into the boot options screen (since it won't go into this, i can't boot from a windows CD either). Any suggestions?

5/11/2007 9:24:16 PM

F8

5/11/2007 9:30:37 PM

well that was dumb...she had her iPod plugged in and it (i guess) was trying to read it as the primary drive. MYSTERY SOLVED.

5/11/2007 9:37:59 PM

My brother's laptop has decided not to boot up all of a sudden.

When you start up the laptop, the loading bar goes through, and then when it tries to boot, this message pops up:

Invalid BOOT.INI file
Booting from C:/windows

Then, this message pops up:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the file above.

I asked my brother if he had any backup discs like I had on my desktop, and he said no. I hope it's not a virus or some other bug. I was wondering what do I need to do to get my bro's laptop back running again? His laptop is also a Dell Inspiron. He doesn't have a iPod plugged in like the previous user.

6/14/2007 2:30:47 PM

Boot from the Windows CD and run the recovery utility on it.

6/14/2007 2:34:07 PM

^I would, but my bro said he didn't receive any CDs for his computer. He only got the laptop. I just found it very hard to believe that he wouldn't have anything like that b/c I got a lot of system CDs for my computer when I bought my desktop.

[Edited on June 14, 2007 at 2:45 PM. Reason : sorry...]

6/14/2007 2:41:17 PM

If I used my Windows CD from my desktop, do you think it'll work or will I need the one from my brother's laptop? We both have Windows XP.

6/14/2007 3:44:43 PM

A lot of new computers come with all of that data on a backup partition.

6/14/2007 3:45:24 PM

Quote :

"partition - (computer science) the part of a hard disk that is dedicated to a particular operating system or application and accessed as a single unit"

Sorry, I had to look that up.

So pretty much what you're saying is that it's already on the computer, and we'll have to find a way to access it to backup the OS?

6/14/2007 3:50:34 PM

Well, if anyone else has any more suggestions about the booting issue, feel free to post. I'm going to talk to more people to see what I can do to help my bro's computer. Late.

6/14/2007 4:55:03 PM

We found out it was a trojan horse. He's going to Geek Squad to get it fixed.

6/15/2007 8:26:37 AM