Computer Glitches and Fixes

Well...in the continuing saga of the computer follies. Here is what happened thus far. Because that little HAL.dll file was missing, I could not access Windows. It would not boot from a rescue disk, nor from the CD Rom for reinstall. So...I put the original 4.2 gig hard drive with Windows 98 in as primary. It too has a problem and would not boot up narmally. However...I was able to go into safe mode...access the Partition Magic program installed and run some tests. Then I removed the 30 gig drive, set it as slave, replaced it and from the old drive using PM...reformated the entire thing. Problem solved because every last bit of data was wiped clean.

Then I reset the clean hard drive as master and proceeded with a clean XP install. Now I am at my cousin's office collecting programs I need to reinstall on the clean disk. Everthing should hopefully be up and running in a couple of hours. There is definately more than one way to "skin a cat". I am still waiting on the 512 megs of DDR Ram I bought to arrive...I should see a substantial improvement in speed and performance when it gets installed.

Computers...great when they work like they should. Boat anchors when they don't!