Wont boot. Says operating system not found, Recovery disc wont work!!!

[Aromagician]

HAs my laptop died?

I turned it on and got the error message, when booting- No operating system found.

I turned off and on a few times with no change.

I pushed the reset button, no change, but did get this message

Windows root system >\system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt.

So got out my HP recovery disc, and attempted to do the repair as advised on many sites.

Changed it in setup to boot from CD, then it accessed it, a screen came up warning that if I continued all  added files would be destroyed ( or something like that) and to select a language, which I did.

Then it said restoring factory image. I clicked on, Then NO WINDOWS SET UP window appeared as promised by all sites.

All that came up was eject! in bios  and my HP Quickstore recovery disc was ejected.

Another site (HP) suggest I do the hard drive self test.

But it says Diagnostics not supported. Test Status: no IDE Drive.

It is not a new laptop- HP pavilion ZE4500. I have got a new one but found my writing worked better on the old one ( foibles of creative instinct) so while saving most of my work on other, had just written a new chapter on the old one ( which has above problem)

Can I repair it? I was hoping to repair XP rather than just reinstall?

Help!!

[melanchete]

Does your BIOS have a hard drive diag?  If so, use it.  If not Google WD Diag, Power Max to name a few.  SpinRite http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm  Sounds like the hard drive is toast.

[CherylG]

Sounds like it is time to replace the hdd.

[Aromagician]

Maybe time for that big recycling center in the sky

[Leo5311]

Hi!

You might try reading the following website: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm

[bkasch]

If it says diagnostics not supported the hdd has bit the dust. You can contact HP for a replacement but your better off calling locally to find a suitable replacement. Most of the time when a hdd goes bad its not the drive, but its the controller.

[Aromagician]

If the HDD is dust does that mean that any files stored on the laptop are completely lost? 

[CherylG]

When the hdd dies so do all the files on it.There are (expensive)  professional data recovery services, just depends on how badly you want/need the files.

If it were me,and I had important files I would  try removing it and connectiong it to another machine via USB connector to try to retrieve files.

Message Edited by CherylG on 04-06-2009 03:32 PM

[Leo5311]

Hi!

If you still received some message about some files missing like hal.dll missing, then this means that your laptop is well but your hard drive needs some maintenance work. This is discuss in the website that I have provided earlier. What does this all mean? This means that your data can still be recovered if you know how and if you make your move fast. Better ask somebody in your area knowledgeable enough to get your data to another temporary disk before doing something about the ailing drive.

[melanchete]

Take a look at http://www.Ontrack.com for data recovery and diags.