Dual Boot hal.dll Issue with Vista and XP on Second Hard Drive

[AdLib13]

I have a Lenovo x61 tablet that I bought a few months ago (love it). The only downside is some program incompatibilities with Vista. So, I recently decided to install Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 on a second HDD that's in my dock's ultrabay hard drive adapter. My hope was to be able to have Vista Business as normal on my laptop, but also the ability to boot into Vista OR XP when my computer is docked.

So with a USB external CD drive (because my second HDD is in the place of my ultrabay CD drive) I formatted my second HD and installed Windows XP. However, after it completed installing and rebooted, I was presented with the following error message:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.

Please re-install a copy of the above file."

With BIOS, I changed to boot order so that my primary HDD (Vista) was first, and my comp booted normally into Vista. I checked the system32 folder and the hal.dll file was there. Trying again, I went into BIOS and moved the secondary HDD(XP) to the top and once again I was presented with the hal.dll error message.

How can I fix this?!? I really want to be able to have the dual boot capability.

Thanks for any help!

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

Usually Windows expects you to install the older version (XP) first, then the newer version (Vista). That way it will correctly set up the boot manager.

I don't know much about Vista, but I know that the boot manager is different from the previous boot managers. I am sure that you have a conflict there with the boot manager.

Have a look at this article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721886.aspx; there are countless other articles on Vista boot manager if you do a Google search.

[Luis 2012]

Well since you can boot into Vista this should be easy to fix. In XP the booting was directed by the "Boot.ini" file which told the computer in which Hard drive and in which partition each operating system was located so that then you could choose which to boot into each. In vista this is done by "BCD.exe" and can be edited if you go to the start menu and type in BCDedit.exe, but this brings up a command promt. You can always download EasyBCD at http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Boot into vista install EasBCD, run it and then repare the MRB, then chose to add XP to the list. For more help read their forums on how to work the program. Afterwards the next time you boot you should be asked which operating system you want to boot into, XP or Vista, and then Voila. You're all done. If you still keep getting the error when trying to boot into XP, then go into vista and find the Drive where you have XP installed. Go to Tools-Options-and enable hidden files and uncheck the hide protected system files. Then you should be able to see a boot.ini file in the drive where XP is installed. Make sure it is pointing to the right hard disk and the right partition on that har disk. Here's a link to how boot.ini info is stored http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/bootini.htm scroll down on the page and it explins what each option in boot.ini is