PC sometimes boot but firmware & system32 error?

[select127]

ok, Im new to the board and need some info on how to fix this problem. first of all i don't no anything about PC's except how to use them & some basic stuff. both the PC's Im gonna mention belonged to my brother and yes he caused the problems i believe. the first one was roughly 3-4 years old and all of a sudden it started doing the restart thing where before it reaches the windows XP loading screen it would restart and do the same over. it finally just broke down and wouldn't show no display at all but the PC itself would power on like normal with no beeps. so that one we didn't bother to repair and another custom built PC(seems like it with fancy tower, multiple fans and lights etc.) was given to him by my dad who bought it somewhere i don't know. well a week or two later the same problem took over that PC. it did the restart thing for a couple days and then the no display on screen but power seemed normal. I decided to mess with it a lil bit, switched the ram around then let it sit for a few minutes and what do u know it starts up when i push the power button. but it will never boot up fully. came to the "pc wasn't shut down properly, plz select a config......" screen so i chose "the last known config..." and got this error message "unimplemented firmware vector (FID 00000000)". so i would have to shut down PC & try again. i rebooted a couple times and also got a message saying "windows root\system32\hal.d11 file is missing or currupted, fix or repair to continue" so yea i have no idea how to fix or what is causing this problem. recently i've tried doing the ram switching and powering up but im yet to get a display on my screen like before. I know this is a long read but id really appreciate it if anyone can help me or gimme a better idea of my problem. btw i did search but didn't come up with results about these error messages.

[Sylvander]

1. See Missing Windows hal.dll file. (http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm)

(a) Which Windows version? XP?
(b) Which file system? NTFS?

(c) Assuming that the BIOS sees the HDD; and the BIOS is configured so that the HDD parameters are being auto detected and configured by the BIOS; and it's correctly jumpered; and it was initialised [partitioned & formatted] for use on the [IDE?] controller to which it is connected...
Then it might be a problem with the boot files on the HDD...
In which case you could use an NT/2000/XP boot floppy [You should always keep one handy. Does the PC have a FDD?] as the "System Drive" to boot "from". That will boot "to" Windows on the boot partition. [Have I got it right Paul?]
The FREE bootable Emergency Boot CD [EBCD] (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485) [you should always have one handy] includes the "Create NT/2000/XP Boot Floppy" program [on its 2nd menu] that easily makes a kind of "Universal" boot floppy.
When you boot with that you are presented with a menu of 4 possible physical HDD's, each with 4 possible partitions to boot to.
If you know that Windows is on the 1st [and only?] HDD, and its 1st [and only?] partition, choose to boot that.
If you don't know where Windows is you could try various other combinations of drive & partition.
If you still get "hal.dll is missing", then the problem is not with the boot files, and you need to look elsewhere for the culprit.

Just recently I got that error when I swapped my HDD from the internal IDE controller to a PCI to IDE controller card.
Slipped in the boot floppy and booted from that to Windows, but it still gave the warning, so I repartitioned and reformatted the HDD whilst on the card, and restored an image of C: and that fixed it. :)

2. You could use the EBCD "File Manager" [1st menu] to attempt to browse the files on C:
If that can display C: and its contents, then there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the way the drive is set up for use. The partition can be accessed.

3. You could also use the EBCD "Drive Fitness Test Utility" to test the HDD.