Meanwhile we are waiting for a new release of Comodo Antivirus that resolve the HAL.dll booting problem definitively, anybody has an idea to stop that problem temporarily.
Faxophone
I’m assuming you mean stop it from happening in the first place. Can’t you just “exclude” CAVS from scanning the DLL?
BTW Out of interest what does Windows say on boot?
doesn’t sound like a bad idea to try assuming it’s the scan that gets it… I had the impression from reading the posts it may have been more closely linked to the install/uninstall, but who really knows for sure?
Certainly can’t hurt… unless it really is infected 
Install/uninstall? I missed that. But, I suspect that I am missing a large part of the hal.dll story. There’s plenty of posts mentioning the DLL. But, not many details. Someone said that they’d lost Email & some older software. But, that (as you are probably well aware) is not really what happens when you have problems with that particular DLL. Normally you can’t boot.
I’m confused.
kail,
They were loosing things because they elected to do a format and/or reinstall of windows… myself, I would have tried a repair install first, but not everyone may know that is an option.
Or they may have skipped the format and don’t realize that their files are still located in the first installs profile, and could get them if they browsed the “Documents and Settings” folder.
At any rate, the Hal disappearing trick prevented their boot into Windows, it was the decisions to get back into Windows that caused the data “loss”.
This is true, but I couldn’t get the file to expand off the XP disk. I took the hd out and used it as a slave on my second PC so I could just copy the file. After that, a large number of things no longer worked on my PC. I had to reinstall both my video and sound card drivers and I was still getting strange errors on a lot of different programs. I opted to format because I wasn’t sure if this created more problems that I wasn’t aware of or that XP didn’t throw an error for.
I think it is definitely a install/unistall problem. If CAV would have quarantined the dll fil, I would have noticed that.
m0ng0d: Thanks, mate. Now, I finally, undestand. IMHO you’re right, repair-recovery is normally the best method for recovering hal.dll.
Ryan: Thanks for your answer (confirmation that CAVS probably didn’t try to quaratine it). Video/Sound drivers, software errors, etc… you’re right this does happen. It normally means that the hal.dll you have now, wasn’t the one you had previously or Windows thinks it’s different (same painful result). From Windows point-of-viiew, it’s a bit like somebody just changed most (if not all) of the hardware in the system. It’s a real pain… I’ve been there several times & there are so many reasons for it to happen (aside from virus activity).
Ryan: Thanks for your answer (confirmation that CAVS probably didn't try to quaratine it). Video/Sound drivers, software errors, etc.. you're right this does happen. It normally means that the hal.dll you have now, wasn't the one you had previously or Windows thinks it's different (same painful result). From Windows point-of-viiew, it's a bit like somebody just changed most (if not all) of the hardware in the system. It's a real pain.. I've been there several times & there are so many reasons for it to happen (aside from virus activity).
Yep me too, and I had to validate my XP license again… 
So the steps for the recovery console
-
Boot from a Windows XP CD. -
At the next screen press “R” to repair using the Recovery Console. -
Press the number correlated with the Windows installation you want to fix. Typically this will be 1. -
When prompted for “Administrator password” press [ENTER] if you have not set a password for it. -
Type:
expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll
where “d” is the letter of your CD-ROM and “c” the letter of the drive your operating system is installed on.
-
Take out the Windows XP CD and type exit
It didn’t work for me, but that could be because my XP disc is all scratched up thanks to little hands :
Did it not work in the sense that the expand actually failed or that whilst it appeared to work, the “corrupt or missing hal.dll” message was still there (ie. no boot)?
Unable to expand it. Not sure why, I’ve done it before with other files that have gone amok. I just assume it’s because the disc is in bad shape.
Ah… Well, it’s happened to me enough that I now have a backup of HALL.DLL (called HAL.DLB) & a backup of boot.ini (called boot.bak) sitting in their relevant directories. Last time it happened to me… maybe 6 months ago… I was back within minutes via a 2 COPYs from the recovery console. Actually, I lie. : I’m way too much of an old meddling nerd for that. ;D I, of course, ran a single BAT file to restore the above files & then the registry hives. 8)
say it again… you know, that part about being right… I don’t hear it enough
Melih, we need an emote with a Phat Head ;D
(V)
OK, right now as we speak. I no longer have the hal.dll and am missing a large number of other files. I uninstalled CAV and reinstalled it last night as a test.
I worked fine all day, the only other thing that happened and what seemed to trigger all this. Was while I was away from the PC, the screensaver came on. It is set to automatically go back to the Windows Login Screen when this happens. My wife logged in as well (with me still in) and started having all kinds of problems.
I have the hal.dll backed up. But there is more missing than that 
Sure… m0ng0d I think your are right. Right. RIGHT. RIGHT!
How’s that?
Woah, slow down, not so many at once… I fear my heart can’t take it
But many thanx!
So Ryan… the screen saver kicked in after the reinstall? Then the files went missing? Everything was fine until the screen saver kicked in on an otherwise successful experiment?
So Ryan... the screen saver kicked in after the reinstall? Then the files went missing? Everything was fine until the screen saver kicked in on an otherwise successful experiment?
Yes, I did the uninstall/reinstall last night (actually early this morning) and I haven’t rebooted since the requested restart after the install was done.
The PC goes to the screensaver after 10 minutes and brings up the login screen after it is cleared. This is similar to the situations I discussed in the other post. I haven’t noticed any problems all day with this happening but it is possible that these files were already missing and it just didn’t trigger until she logged in with a limited account (another possible issue)
Once she logged in she instantly started getting an error that one of the ODBC drivers was missing to run Microsoft Office. I tried to go to Microsoft Update in the start menu, and the muweb.dll is missing as well.
Trying to see what else is missng.
hmmm… I wonder what is so different between our systems that I have never had this issue…
hmmm… now that I think about it, all my initial CAV installs failed because SpywareGuard was blocking it… so really this has been my first successful full install… and have yet to try unistall it… oh ■■■■… now I don’t want to either!! :o :-\
I uninstalled the failed installs a couple times, but never since it finally installed properly.
Well, I am going to run a new backup of my most needed files on to my external hard drive. Then I am going to play with it a little to see if I can figure this out.
I was hoping this wouldn’t occur again, but the only way to fix it is to find it…
Let you know what I come up with…
That’s awesome Ryan! I dread reloading my PC… way too much installed to want to do it all over again ;D
At some point we’re going to have to christen you Sir Guinee Pig
(CNY)
That's awesome Ryan! I dread reloading my PC... way too much installed to want to do it all over againAt some point we’re going to have to christen you Sir Guinee Pig
Heh, so do I. But I would much rather get this out of the way now and save COMODO the possibility of having any future troubles with it. System Restore wouldn’t work either
I had to re-download most of the XP Security Fixes, I guess because whatever is causing this corrupted them or removed some of the necessary files. Once that was done, System Restore worked but it didn’t fix my other issues I am having. Dantz Retrospect for my Maxtor External HD is throwing errors and won’t run.
So I am going to start all over again. Format the HD and start out testing it with minimal programs installed, if I cannot duplicate it, I will install all my programs back on and there are a lot of them :
Got my fingers crossed that I can get this duplicated and get the data back to COMODO so it can be taken care of. Wish me luck… I guess… LOL