Dreaded error message Cant find Windows root\system32\hal.dll

Today my computer wouldn't boot up getting as far as the Installers logo and then the dreaded error message came up. I have tried all amnners of ways 9as suggested on the Internet) but most of them asume that I have a Windows screen. I have tried a Windows 11 installer, Windows media content, forced reboot, etc but to no avail. Any have any clue what I can do. Can I say iot was installed via a Mocrosoft apporach and has not been a trouble since then.

This may not be the solution but as a diagnostic can you open the BIOS and check if it is seeing the boot/system drive properly? HAL/Hardware Abstract Layer is required for Windows and the BIOS sets up the available devices on the motherboard for the Operating System to load and know about what it has to work with, could be the boot/system drive has failed or has become corrupted. A diagnostic I use is a bootable Linux LiveDVD or bootable LiveUSB to test that the computer is still usable.

Let's hope it's not faulty hardware causing the boot error.

Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type below command into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

The following command scans integrity of all protected Windows system files and repairs files with problems when possible.




Please replace partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When the computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment, the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assigned any other drive letter, usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit | find "osdevice" command can be used to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition, the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Thank you for your reply. I wonder how many replies you get when you spend time to respond to someone's query. Hopefylly this will correct this slightly. I tried your remedy but to no avail. Eventually a Windows technician looked at the computer or me. There was no problem with the hardware but Windows had corrupted (his words). He had to install a new Windows - 10 as it happens. The computer had been invited to be upgarded by Microsoft but the technicial said the architecture wasn't sufficient so maybe that was the problem although it had been OK for about 6 months. All well now and your advice was appreciated.Thank you

You are very welcome.