hal.dll problem : posible solution

[MIKXHT]

I'm a noobie on the insanelymac forum but I have been around Macs and lately WIN boxes for a while. I have yet to fully test this solution but am at least at first base.

 

I came across the dreaded " hal.dll" missing or corrupt message while trying to set up an ACER Aspire One 532h for dual WIN XP SP 3 + OS 10.6.3

 

(NOTE : The 532h BIOS is set to IDE which allows WIN XP to see the HD)

 

After a couple of very frustrating days of trying to get around "hal.dll" I tried a bit of lateral thinking.

 

So far I have been able to get Win XP SP 3 (Japanese) installed and stable on one of 2 partitions

in a 160 gb SATA HD.

 

Here is what I did.

 

1. I partitioned the drive on my Mac Pro (10.6.6) into 90 gb for OSX and the rest for WIN XP/

 

2. I set the HD to GUID with the WIN XP partiton as the lower (2nd. partition)

 

3. I set the OSX partition as "empty space" . . . .

 

My thinking was that as empty space WIN XP might ignore it during the installation and sure enough . . after the XP disk had found the drive only the "C:" drive (the one I set up for XP) was showing.

 

The install went smoothly, I formatted the XP partition in NTFS (slow format).

 

I have run out of time today but he next step will be to take the 532h SATA drive out and format the OSX partition for Mac Extended Journaled . . pop it back in the ACER and see if the dreaded "hal.dll" makes a re-appearance. If hal.dll doesn't show at bootup up then there should be no reason why the OSX install cannot go ahead.

 

I will post my results in the next few days. My fingers are crossed.

 

Cheers from Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn't resist it . . I formatted the formerly "empty space" partition and popped the drive back in the ACER . . . . no luck. Looks like I'll have to edit the XP boot file

 

Oh well, I'll keep at it.

 

UPDATE

 

I managed ( with a standard GUID + 2 partitions format) to install Win XP SP 3 (Japanese) with everything working (after Acer propriety install) and did not get the "hal.dll" error.

 

My OSX partition is there ready for OSX 10.6.3

 

So far so good.

 

Little by little.