Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Boot Failure

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Yesterday morning my computer showed an error that it was unable to boot after doing a restart overnight.
Restarting it brought up an error about a missing or corrupt hal.dll.
I have read through a number of posts here and elsewhere, ran bootsect, used the repair windows option and still no boot.
I pulled the drive and installed it into another computer and it reads just fine, all my data and programs are still on the drive.
I then got the install dvd, can;t do the non-destructive reinstall since I can’t boot Windows. I am attempting to avoid reinstalling all of programs.
I got another drive, installed a clean copy of Windows &, then copied the hal.dll into the old drive System32 folder, rebooted from the old drive, now I get to see the Windows name and just as the colored balls should appear, I see a tiny red dot and then the system restarts.
I did copy everything over from the old drive to the new one, again it all copied properly and I verified that all of the data is intact.
I really would like to be able to get this drive booting again to complete image.
I have what appears to be a drive image on a network drive that is about 5 days old, can that be loaded over the new install on the new drive? I have my PST file and there isn’t anything else new that I care about.

Thanks,
Jeff

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I have what appears to be a drive image on a network drive that is about 5 days old, can that be loaded over the new install on the new drive?

If you had a drive image made that is 5 days old, yes by all means, attempt to have it restored.
Then start to seriously reconsider your backup regimen’s usefulness and how it can be improved upon for future emergencies.

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If hal.dll is missing, you can even try to get it from your image, and see if it solves the issue.

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Insert the boot disk for whatever app you made the Image from and open the Image on the Network drive. Grab the hal.dll there and place it into the appropriate spot to see if this solves your problem. The boot disk will allow you to open the image just like it is on your HD with all folders displayed as they are. You can open all folders just like on your HD, at least I can with my Imaging app. I would attempt this first.

I would suspect the hal.dll for Win 8 CP is different from the Win 7 version.

The other option is as Clint states, simply restore the Image from the Network location to your HD. If this is truly a complete system Image, it should restore in less than 10 minutes.

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Thanks for the responses. Pretty much what I was going to do.
The system image is the Windows system image. I’ll see if I can get the hal.dll and give that a shot. Otherwise I will just attempt to restore the image.
I have a number of backups, the issue isn’t the data, it’s the pain of reinstalling all of the programs and the settings again.
I am still curious about the startup symptom, where the “glowing balls” are just starting, the red ball is tiny and then the computer restarts.
I wonder what is actually happening at that point to kill the boot process and force a restart.

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Have you tried booting in safe mode?

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Yes, I can get the the F8 menu, but I get the same hal.dll failure with any of the selections there.

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Let us know if the hal.dll is restored from the image or you had to restore the image please.

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So I’d say it’s either the hal.dll recovery or the image restoration.

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If you boot with the windows disk you can choose the repair option and then select start-up repair. As all files are on the windows install disk it will replace whatever files needed for booting and should get you started again without losing anything.
If your image is a windows generated image then the same repair option will let you restore from an image backup as long as you know where the image is.

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I have attempted the repair option multiple time and it fails every time. I can get to that option from the boot disk and sometimes from the bad drive, but it always fails, so that function is not resolving it, hence my posting here. I had been down that road yesterday and the day before.
As noted, I have also attempted to repair the boot sector with the bootsect command with no joy.

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Well, I was not able to open the image file to get the hal.dll, so I am doing a restore of the 4/1 image to the new drive.
After that is completed, I will copy over the hal.dll to the old drive and see if I can boot from it. If not, I may attempt to do an image restore to the old drive just to see if that works.
The first image restore is running now, so it will be a while until I cna see where I am with it./
Still odd about the almost boot and then shut down. Is there any way to capture what is going on in the boot process on the “bad” drive so that we can figure that issue out? It is certainly past the hal.dll issue there so something else is corrupt.

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Once you have things straightened up, I think you should look at different Imaging options. The built in Imaging app is a very basic app. I use Acronis and I am able to open the Image and grab individual files, etc. This must be a limiting feature of the built in app. There are many excellent third party apps, both free and paid, that will do an excellent job for you.

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Okay, so now I have an issue with the image restore. I had that on a network drive and copied it onto the drive I am going to restore on.
I run the restore image, it appears to go through the process, btu then reboots and there is no update.
Do I need ot have the image on an external/other drive?

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You do not copy the Image to the drive. You have to have a boot Disk made from the app used to create the Image (I do not know exactly how the Win 7 Image app works, but with Acronis I had to make a boot disk I insert into the CD drive to boot into the Acronis app) then restore the Image from there. Ms lists the steps to Restore from an Image here.

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you start the Windows image restore from either the repair tools on the install dvd or from control panel and recovery from inside Windows.
I ran that but it didn’t replace the current new Windows install with the image.

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Okay, re-running the image restore from the install disk and this time had the option to do a reformat to match the image, so that is in process. This will likely take quite a while to run, so hopefully I’ll get back the image and system.
I’ll update later when it completes.

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Yes, it does appear the third option of restore from the Installation Disk or System Repair Disk is the only option that will work for you. Keeping my :crossfingers: for you.

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Well, I have attempted to restore the image 4 times and it doesn’t work. I am follow all of the steps that i find, but no dice.
When I boot from the install disk, my new drive comes up as F, not C, which is where the image seems to want to go.
Again, this is using the Windows 7 image recovery.
Any suggestions?

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Well, I have attempted to restore the image 4 times and it doesn’t work. I am follow all of the steps that i find, but no dice.
When I boot from the install disk, my new drive comes up as F, not C, which is where the image seems to want to go.
Again, this is using the Windows 7 image recovery.
Any suggestions?

I suspect you won’t be able to use that image. Can you get the disk back to the original computer and use image from there? That would probably be my last attempt. If not, then I would go to a clean install, as painful as that would be. I would also find an alternate imaging app (I use Acronis, but I simply cannot recommend their current version, so would give easeus or macrium a try).

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I have no further suggestions. As I said I do not use the Win 7 Imaging S/W. I use one of the excellent 3rd party apps. At this point you might be at a point where a reinstall is more time effective that continuing to futz with an image that isn’t working. Is there anyone out there that has actually restored from the Win 7 Imaging App??? Perhaps it does not like to restore from a network location. My Images are all on an Ext HD. Just guessing here.

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The image is not working so after a long, frustrating process, I am just biting the bullet and re-installing everything.
I would have been done by now, except the image restore “should” have worked.
I’ll be looking into the other imaging programs mentioned once I have this thing running again.
Thanks for all the input.

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Sorry for that. I switched to a 3rd party imaging app a several years ago and haven’t looked back. Win 7 Backup and Restore just did not seem to work as advertised for me. This will give you a pristine installation if that’s any consolation.

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That’s about the only saving grace here. Once I get everything back in and running , I will be making an image file using one of the other programs sicne I can’t rely on the built in one.

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Unfortunately, been there, done that!

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