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Hi I'm an Ubuntu newbie here. I've installed ubuntu 11.10 to dual boot on a single HDD. I did a manual partition and basically forgot all the on what sda my /boot partition is. My installation worked out just fine and I tried to install updates with it. After a while I when I wanted to boot to windows it showed that I was missing a "hal.dll" file. I've fixed this problem using the windows resource CD but then after booting up my PC it went straight to Windows XP. I've tried to manually reinstall Grub2 using a Live CD/USB and it worked but I think I have installed in on a different "sda#" (sda5 to be exact) because even though Grub2 loads when I boot my PC, only windows XP shows up as my OS and Ubuntu 11.10 is missing.

Now, I've tried installing boot-repair to solve my problems using Live CD/USB. Boot-repair tells me that boot configuration was successful but then a basic grub interface shows up (the black one with a command line grub> showing up. Now I can't even boot to Windows XP. Any help would be really appreciated. BTW here's the notes from boot repair that I was asked to save: http://paste.ubuntu.com/890228/ As you can see there are boot files on sda5 and sda7. I think that's the core problem that I have right now.

Thanks in advance!

2 Answers 2

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I solved a similar missing hal.dll problem for a dual-boot of XP and Ubuntu 12.04 (which I installed after Windows) and Grub2. I couldn't boot up Ubuntu so I used Boot-Repair which fixed Grub2 and let me boot Ubuntu, but broke my Windows XP boot, ironically (I believe) because I had selected "Repair Windows boot files" option.

The solution I found was to boot into Ubuntu and edit Windows' C:/boot.ini file. When I compared this file to the boot.ini.bak file, I saw that the partition number had been inappropriately changed from the original:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

to

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS

Once I restored boot.ini to the original (by pasting the contents of boot.ini.bak into boot.ini) such that XP booted from partition(2) and not partition(3), Windows XP booted up just fine!

I am really new to this stuff, but I believe this problem occurs because Boot-Repair recognized my Ubuntu swap drive (which is a logical/extended and not a primary partition) as an extra partition, whereas Windows XP did not. Thus, Boot-Repair will potentially break your Windows boot.ini file if there are logical partitions preceding your Windows installation.

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Please run Boot-Repair, click "Advanced options", then:

  • in the "GRUB location" tab, select the "Use separate /boot : sda5" option

  • and in the "GRUB options" tab, tick the "FlexNet" option

  • then apply, and indicate the new URL that will appear. Reboot and check if it's better.

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  • Thanks for your swift response. I did exactly what you've said. I now have the Grub2 back on but still the only OS that it has on the list in Win XP on sda2 and now when I click on it to log on to Windows it says that I'm missing the hal.dll file again.Here's the new URL that appeared: paste.ubuntu.com/890845 Thanks for taking the time to respond.
    – yoopian
    Mar 19, 2012 at 16:10
  • ok, now GRUB sees Windows, but you still have 2 problems: (1) Ubuntu is not recognized by GRUB. (2) Windows is broken. For Ubuntu you can try following this tutorial ( help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuReinstallation ), and for Windows you can try to download a new hal.dll file from the internet. If i were you, i would simply backup my documents, then reinstall XP, then reinstall Ubuntu, this would be faster.
    – Yann
    Mar 20, 2012 at 13:20

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