My aunt has a pc and all of a sudden she tells me this happened




I have to go over to her place over the weekend and want some suggestions before I go.
She's a novice regarding PC's, but what could have possibly cause this?

Could she have deleted important files by accident?

Can this be a hardware problem? ( please don't let it be a hardware problem)

I want to thank you for any help or info you can provide

The error message she's giving you is IMO far too "Generic." It doesn't specify which Windows "program" needs to be re-installed. Hopefully the real error message is a bit more specific.

Perhaps ask her to look at the error message again, write it down verbatim, and relay it to you.

Diggler

I'm wondering what OS she's using. I know my brother once had some Win95 files corrupt, and when the pc booted and tried to load Windows, he got that gray error message and couldn't go any further. He in fact had to reinstall Win95.

Initially, to me, it sounds like a corrupted registry. Is this the error message?
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEMS32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

If that's the message and it's XP, check this out:
How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting
READ THE WARNING!!!

Now, I don't want to lead you down the wrong path because I'm just guessing what the issue is. Just be aware that many times these issues are the result of a failing hard drive. I'd be sure to bring drive utilities from Maxtor, Western Digital and Seagate and run the appropriate one on the drive to see if there are any errors. Do the full tests if the quick tests show no errors.

thankyou for all the suggestions.

The PC is a dell running XP home w/sp2. Its only a couple of months old. I emailed her again asking for more details.

I might actually go over today and try to fix this problem.

Dell has some diagnostic software installed on a partition on the hard drive. I think you need to press F2 at the boot screen to access it. Run the diagnostics on the hard drive just to see if that's the culprit.

If the hard drive is fine then please post the exact error message as Diggler suggested. Oh, and be sure to check the floppy drive (if there is one) and optical drives for any media and remove them.

just got back from a frustrating experience. I couldn't get any details in advance because I was in a rush.


The file the PC says is missing was hal.dll (windows/system32/)

I thought this is going to be fast and easy. Just extract the file, replace and I can go home. I was completely useless. I forgot how or was unable to find this file. I couldn't even view the XP CD. I had a copy of the ultimate boot disc, but I couldn't figure out how to access the HD from it. The only dir I was able to view was Q:

I am such a noob. Also I couldn't go online for help because normal ppl only have one PC and don't have backup/testing PC's justing sitting around.

Arrghh, I gave up and did a reformat.

Such a simple problem and such a retarded solution.

well if it makes you feel any better, when that happens to me, it starts with saying it cant find one file, and when i replace it, it says it cant find another file, so if i replace that, it will just continue on and on saying to cant find all these files...its a neverending search for replacement files.....

This may have contained the solution. You may have had to reinstall anyway.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;314477

I had this happen on a friend's PC recently and the Microsoft solution didn't work despite many attempts. Although wiping out the drive wasn't the preferred choice, the silver lining is that it resolved other issues and the PC runs MUCH better now.