If you perform some serious upgrading of hardware on your Windows XP computer and try starting it, you may be presented with the dreaded "HAL.DLL is missing or corrupt" error message. If so, don't despair—there's a process you can follow to try and fix things. Here's what you do:

1. Boot from your product CD and choose the Recovery Console option and log on with your administrator password.

2. Type the following commands in order:

cd c:

attrib -h -r -s boot.ini

del c:\boot.ini

bootcfg /rebuild

fixboot

3. Then restart your computer.

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Mitch Tulloch is President of MTIT Enterprises, an IT content development company based in Winnipeg, Canada. Prior to starting his own company in 1998, Mitch worked as a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for Productivity Point International. Mitch is a widely recognized expert on Windows administration, networking and security and has written 14 books and over a hundred articles on various topics. He has been repeatedly awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status by Microsoft for his outstanding contributions in supporting users who deploy Microsoft platforms, products and solutions. Mitch is also a professor at Jones International University (JIU) where he teaches graduate-level courses in Information Security Management (ISM) for their Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program. For more information see http://www.mtit.com.