AumHa Forums

My 160G hard drive blue screened me one time. It has many errors apparently.
I have installed a new 320G drive which is working fine in parrallel with the old drive.
I bought O&O software which clones my old 160G drive onto my new 320G drive. It asks if I want the new clone to be bootable, I reply yes and it appears so in my computer.
On my old drive Partition "C" has the O/S and is marked as "system", Partition "E" is the recovery partition.
On my new drive Partition "G" has the O/S and is marked as active Partition "K" is the recovery partition.

When I ask the pc to boot from the new drive I get an error stating the HAL.dll is missing or corrupt. The HAL file is in G / windows/system32 as should be and is an exact copy of c/windows/system32.
I suspect it is just a matter of telling the pc where HAL.dll is but I don't know how. Any ideas?

Who are the manufacturers of the two drives you mention?

Do you have a Western Digital drive installed on your system?

Is the failing 160GB drive the same one you posted about back in January?... viewtopic.php?t=38207

<applause>

Yes, you are quite correct. It was january I got blue screened. (I take a long time in the planning stages) It is a Western
Since then I bought the new drive and used it as daily back up with no more trouble.
Recently I decided to eliminate the possible fault by cloning the old drive to the much larger new one but couldn't get it to boot.
I found when I didn't clone across the recovery partition my new drive boots fine.
I have my old drive disconnected now and the old recovery partition cloned to an external drive.

I would however appreciate advice on how I might add the recovery partition to my new Hitachi drive without the pc looking for and not finding my HAL.dll within the recovery partition.

Personally, i wouldn't trust the recovery partition even if you did manage to copy it over to your new drive.
A better option would be to contact the pc manufacturer and ask if they can supply you with a recovery cd, most will but usually charge a nominal fee.

Have you checked the Western Digital website lately?
Your purchase of O&O software might not have been necessary as WD now supply their own free version of Acronis True Image called Acronis True Image WD Edition for many of their drives that, as far as i can tell, is the full Acronis product with the only requirement being that a WD drive must be installed.
Go to http://www.wdc.com -> Support -> Downloads ~ select, or enter your drive model... if available it will be listed in the list of available downloads for that drive.

That said, and if you still trust your recovery partition....
Recovery partitions are usually marked as 'hidden' so that the OS and/or MBR can't read them, from what you've said so far it sounds like your recovery partition isn't?

Sorry, i have no experience with hiding a manufacturers hidden recovery partition so can't help you any further with that, perhaps the pc manufactures website will have some information?

Good luck.

Doddie,
Yes, all that makes sense. I was getting a bit fixated on the recovery partition there.
Consider me sorted. Thank you.

You're welcome.