windows can't boot! (thanks wgl!)

My computer crashed due to an error with the wgl functions. Now when I try to boot, hal.dll is missing, so windows can't boot. My laptop has no floppy drive, so I don't know how to get the dll there. I don't have a repair or installation disk. I did get fedora to boot of the DVD eventually, but when I try to access the hard disk with the system (and my personal files) linux says

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org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed
auth_admin_keep_always <-- (action, result)

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so I was thinking that this is because linux is running off of a DVD. So I opened the "Install Fedora on Hard Drive" program, but unless I want to wipe my existing data it won't let me put it on.
What do I do?

Ah, the famous hal.dll error.
Either hal.dll is missing, corrupt or your boot.ini is incorrect.
What I would do is boot into another OS or use Windows Recovery Console.
If another OS, edit boot.ini to the correct hard drive / partition. If you don't know, guess.
If the recovery console, you can use fixmbr and fixboot.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

My computer crashed due to an error with the wgl functions. Now when I try to boot, hal.dll is missing, so windows can't boot. My laptop has no floppy drive, so I don't know how to get the dll there. I don't have a repair or installation disk. I did get fedora to boot of the DVD eventually, but when I try to access the hard disk with the system (and my personal files) linux says

so I was thinking that this is because linux is running off of a DVD. So I opened the "Install Fedora on Hard Drive" program, but unless I want to wipe my existing data it won't let me put it on.
What do I do?

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How did you attempt to mount the system drive, or did the Red Hat disk do it automatically?

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Ah, the famous hal.dll error.
Either hal.dll is missing, corrupt or your boot.ini is incorrect.
What I would do is boot into another OS or use Windows Recovery Console.
If another OS, edit boot.ini to the correct hard drive / partition. If you don't know, guess.
If the recovery console, you can use fixmbr and fixboot.

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Sure, buy Yarin already stated that his "recovery disk" (which is a Fedora disk) doesn't seem to mount the drive properly. Although that looks more like an informative message than an error, to my eyes...

Yarin, are you comfortable with Linux or is it foreign to ya?

I think the latter. http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=96970

Is your Windows system installed on a FAT32 or an NTFS partition? Mounting NTFS partitions in Debian is tricky. I don't know about Fedora, but you might have to do some extra fiddling to get it mounted.

How were you trying to mount the partition? How are you now trying to open it?

What happens if you type "mount" at a terminal? (You can probably open a terminal by looking through the applications/"start" menu, or by typing ALT-F2 and typing "gnome-terminal". If that doesn't work, try "konsole".) Can you post the output of that command?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Sure, buy Yarin already stated that his "recovery disk" (which is a Fedora disk) doesn't seem to mount the drive properly. Although that looks more like an informative message than an error, to my eyes...

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There's the Windows XP CD too, which has the option to start the recovery console, if this CD is available.

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There's the Windows XP CD too,

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I don't know about Yarin, but my XP computer didn't come with an installation CD. I don't think I got a recovery disk, either. It probably asked me to create one or something, but I never did. (And now Linux has assimilated that computer.)

Which is why it's an option. He might have one, he might not.
Otherwise it's possible to install XP somewhere else and modify boot.ini or install Linux and mount the HD and modify boot.ini.

Or maybe it's possible to burn a (recovery) CD off the Internet or something.

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Otherwise it's possible to install XP somewhere else and modify boot.ini or install Linux and mount the HD and modify boot.ini.

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That seems to be what [s]he is trying to do, except that Linux apparently can't mount the partition.

Anyway. You can try something like this. Once you have a terminal open, as I outlined above:

• Make sure you are root. If you are root, the prompt will end with a '#'. If you aren't, it will probably end with a '$'. Alternatively, you can type "whoami". If it says "root", you'll all set to go. If not, try typing "su". I'm not sure how your disk is set up, but that may work. If not, try typing "sudo " ("sudo" plus a space) in front of all of the commands I have outlined below. For example, "sudo fdisk -l" instead of "fdisk -l".
• Type the command "fdisk -l". You should get an output of all of the partitions in your hard drive, and maybe the CD too, I don't know. My fdisk can't tell the difference between FAT and NTFS, unfortunately.
• Try mounting each device listed with this command:
  
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  mount /dev/sda1

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  or whatever device is listed instead of "sda1". After typing the mount command, see what errors were encountered, if any. If no errors appeared, you could try cd'ing to the mounted partition:
  
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  cd /mnt/sda1
ls

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  That will tell you if there's anything there.
  
  Finally, if you like what you see, you can type "/mnt/sda1" or whatever into your file browser and do whatever you like.
• My NTFS partition has to be mounted with this command (which mounts the partition to /mnt/vista):
  
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  mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sda2 /mnt/vista -o force

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  I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to mount a non-NTFS partition this way, or if all NTFS partitions need this or not, or even whether it's specific to Debian or not. :)

Note that you shouldn't type any of the double quotes that I mentioned.

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Originally Posted by dwks

Mounting NTFS partitions in Debian is tricky. I don't know about Fedora, but you might have to do some extra fiddling to get it mounted.

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Not if you use ntfs-config :)

In Konsol I got it under the root, but when I enter fdisk or sudo fdisk it responds with "bash: root: command not found".

I don't have a XP recovery disk (and I never had the option to make one either).

Also, "mount /dev/sda3" doesn't work, it says "mount: can't find /dev/sda3 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab". While hoving over my partitions in konquer, the toolbar says "Unmounted/SYSTEM" and "Unmounted/MYDATA", so you are right about that being the problem.

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Originally Posted by Yarin

Also, "mount /dev/sda3" doesn't work, it says "mount: can't find /dev/sda3 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab". While hoving over my partitions in konquer, the toolbar says "Unmounted/SYSTEM" and "Unmounted/MYDATA", so you are right about that being the problem.

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That's because you didn't give a mount point. You need to say "mount /dev/sda3 /path/to/mount" where /path/to/mount is some real directory somewhere. If you omit the mount point, mount will attempt to find it by looking in /etc/fstab -- and there's no entry for it there. After mounting, the NTFS filesystem can be found in /path/to/mount.

Okay, I mounted to "/mnt/", and I was able to read the files, but not edit or delete any. This really doesn't surprise me (same thing happened on the last mac I was on), but now what?

What does the output of the mount command say? For example, this is one line of mine:

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/dev/sda2 on /mnt/vista type fuseblk (rw,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)

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See the "rw"? That means it's readable and writable. If yours just says "r" or maybe "ro", then it's mounted read-only. If it says "rw", then you're not editing/deleting files properly.

Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

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Originally Posted by dwks

What does the output of the mount command say? For example, this is one line of mine:

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/dev/sda2 on /mnt/vista type fuseblk (rw,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)

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See the "rw"? That means it's readable and writable. If yours just says "r" or maybe "ro", then it's mounted read-only. If it says "rw", then you're not editing/deleting files properly.

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It didn't say anything, I typed in the mount command and the "[somthing@localhost] #" thingy came up, there was no response. (even though it did do it)

That's strange. What about "cat /etc/mtab"? [edit] This is after you mount the partition, of course.

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Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

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In Debian, gnome-system-monitor (which can launch from ALT-F2 or from a terminal). But since you were able to run konsole, you're probably using some sort of KDE system. In that case you might try ksysguard. [/edit]

I did another force shutdown, so it's working again. I'm still going to try to find ksysguard though.

"mount" now includes the line "/dev/sda2 on /mnt type vfat (rw)". Would mounting it as type "fuseblk" instead of "vfat" make it work? If so, how do I change the mount type?

"cat /etc/mtab" returns similar stuff to mount, including the line "/dev/sda2 /mnt vfat rw 0 0".

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Originally Posted by Yarin

Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

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Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't force a reboot quite like it does on Windows. If you're "locked up" in X, try hitting Ctrl-Alt-F2 and see if you get a login prompt. If you do, log in as root and type "shutdown -r now" to reboot cleanly.

Is your Windows filesystem really VFAT? Not NTFS? The VFAT driver is extremely well tested and shouldn't be giving you problems writing to files.

Both my partitions are FAT32, after getting the computer I was also surprised to not see an NTFS fs. (I'm not sure if thats what VFAT is or not.)

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Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't force a reboot quite like it does on Windows. If you're "locked up" in X, try hitting Ctrl-Alt-F2 and see if you get a login prompt. If you do, log in as root and type "shutdown -r now" to reboot cleanly.

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CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE is a good way to force X to restart if it's seriously crashed. I'm not sure how healthy this is. Probably not very.

VFAT means FAT32 (and maybe FAT16, I'm not sure). If your partition is a FAT32 one, then your line looks good.

The only thing I can think of is this. Usually, one does not mount something to /mnt. You typically mount things to directories in /mnt, such as /mnt/sda1, /mnt/vista, and so on.

You can try it like this. The "mkdir" command is unnecessary if you use a directory that already exists in /mnt.

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# mkdir /mnt/win
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/win

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Then, to test if you can write to the partition:

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# cd /mnt/win
# ls    # to make sure you're in the right directory
...
# echo Hello, World! > testfile    # creates a file called "testfile"
# cat testfile    # shows the contents of testfile
Hello, World!
# rm testfile    # deletes testfile
# ls testfile    # confirms that testfile has been deleted
testfile: No such file or directory
#

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"# mkdir /mnt/win" and any mkdir command for that matter always fails with the same old access denied error. The OS won't let me write to anything. I have already mounted the partitions to various paths (I did this while transporting my data with the stick onto this desktop) and the same old thing happens.

So, I snapped. I now have XP Home and 2000 Pro running on my laptop, the revamp cleared my data, but at least fedora let me read the data and now my computer doesn't have all the junk that originally came with it. I still need to finish downloading XPSP2 though. And I need to find and download my MB drivers. (no USB ports are working, and my modem drivers doesn't even think a modem is attached)

If you just install another XP, you should be able to repair the boot.ini file and get access to your old Windows installation.
That should mean you don't need to install any drivers, hopefully.

No no, I revamped the whole system. The whole hd was formated, then 2000 pro was installed, then XP home.
I wish I would've thought of your idea, but even if I did, it would just make my mess of files even more of a mess. (I only had 2 hd partitions, but now I have 4 :D)

Thanks for your help dwks, otherwise, my coding life would've been set back by a few months. :D

Well, you should, since these error do tend to occur frequently.
I got some experience not long ago trying to repair XP. I uninstalled Office and it deleted pretty much all of Windows fonts. So when I next rebooted the system, boom! No hal.dll. OK, so I fix that. Boom! Missing file! I reinstall the font! Boom! Windows looks just plain weird because it default to other fonts from the default ones (it used wingdings or some such).
So I had to reinstall the fonts, but the Font folder had stopped working. So I had to repair it using Tweak XP and then reinstall the fonts and reboot and everything worked as it should!

But it helps to have two hard drives too... two boot sectors!

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Thanks for your help dwks, otherwise, my coding life would've been set back by a few months. :D

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You're welcome. ;)

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"# mkdir /mnt/win" and any mkdir command for that matter always fails with the same old access denied error. The OS won't let me write to anything. I have already mounted the partitions to various paths (I did this while transporting my data with the stick onto this desktop) and the same old thing happens.

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It sounds like you simply didn't have the right permissions.

When a partition is mounted in Linux, it's mounted by a specific user. If you mount it as root, then you probably need to be root to write to it. Commands typed at the '#' prompt are run as root. Therefore, you were likely mounting the partition as root, and trying to write to it as your unprivileged login user. (You can often read partitions mounted by other users, but not usually write to them.) I'm sorry I didn't think of this beforehand.

The surest-fire way to mount something as another user that I know of is to mount it as root, unmount it (with a command like "umount /mnt/win"), and then mount it as the user you want it mounted for.

Anyway, it's pretty much irrelevant now, but I just thought I'd mention it.

Four partitions? Did you dedicate one to Linux? ;)

[edit]

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Well, you should, since these error do tend to occur frequently.
I got some experience not long ago trying to repair XP. I uninstalled Office and it deleted pretty much all of Windows fonts. So when I next rebooted the system, boom! No hal.dll. OK, so I fix that. Boom! Missing file! I reinstall the font! Boom! Windows looks just plain weird because it default to other fonts from the default ones (it used wingdings or some such).
So I had to reinstall the fonts, but the Font folder had stopped working. So I had to repair it using Tweak XP and then reinstall the fonts and reboot and everything worked as it should!

But it helps to have two hard drives too... two boot sectors!

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Okay, I'm biased, but I've never had to boot any of my several Linux systems into a recovery mode or anything. XP and 98 required this several times during the time I was using them.

Also: I'm not sure if "two boot sectors" is the right term. A sector is a portion of the hard drive or other magnetic drive. So maybe "partition" is what you meant. [/edit]

Each hard disk would have a boot sector, so that essentially makes it two.
Yes, Windows does like to throw tantrums. More than linux it seems!

Umm . . . as far as I can tell, Yarin has only one hard drive, or disk as you say. Therefore, this one disk would have only one boot sector with one master boot record. From there, however, a chain bootloader like grub could boot one of the other partitions, making them in that sense bootable too, I suppose.

[edit] Never mind. I see you introduced the idea of two hard drives yourself.

It's a good idea, by the way. One I've used myself several times. [/edit]

Yup, saved me a couple of times, too.

The computer being a laptop is the only thing that's prevented me from hooking up another disk; I have several smaller older drives, but I don't have my desktop anymore. And one of those USB attachment drives would be pretty useless.

>> Four partitions? Did you dedicate one to Linux? ;)
Actually yes. :)

They say it's possible to boot from a usb memory. I don't know if it works, since I've never tried, but one could try...

Maybe your right, my BIOS boot order thing gives the option of booting from USB devices, but I'm not sure how that would really work, I mean, I don't see my BIOS having all these drivers now.

Someone I know once booted puppy linux (I think) from a pen drive, so I guess it can work.

You just have to find a Linux distribution that will fit onto a pen drive, and get the biggest pen drive you can get your hands on first. But then you can stick it into virtually any modern computer (that can boot off of a pen drive) and get into your own custom operating system, with all of your files and so on . . . great if you use many different computers (like me) and are allowed to reboot them (unlike me).