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In Reply to: RE: cPlay - the open source high-end audio player using ASIO posted by cics on May 05, 2008 at 13:31:58
I was simply rebooting my cmp box today and got the dreaded HAL error. HAL = hardware abstraction layer, the cpu hardware drivers if you will. One can get this error by either having a corrupt/missing hal file or some hardware failure. Given that I had my last HAL error only a month ago and solved it by reflashing my bios...I reflashed again but this action did not solve the hal error this time. I tried reloading earlier versions of my operating system to make sure my hal file was good but that did not work either. Relative to hardware ... I measured the psu voltages and they are all good going to the mobo (12v, 5 volt supplies) and the cpu (12 v). I can enter bios to reflash or reset optimized defaults so that infers that mobo, cpu and memory hardware are ok. I ran a chkdsk on my ssd (on which my OS resides) while it was in a docking station hooked up to my desktop and it showed no errors or bad sector. Something is obviously not right so any ideas out there on what to test?
Follow Ups:
Turns out I had my Master Boot Record on my ssd corrupted. Only way I could fix was by reloading Windows. During that process one of my 2 switching power supplies failed (it was supplying my cpu and one of my data discs). So this may be at the root of my downtime. I put my cpu on the one good psu and finished loading xp from scratch. Then reloaded my 25 mb Windows with Snapshot (thank goodness for SS). So I'm good & will probably leave p4 and p24 on one PSU and drive data discs with separates. Ah the sweet sound of music!Now why does my switching psu's keep failing? Beats me. I used to run my psu's on the low side (on the pot inside I set p4 to 11.92 v). After 2 failures I adjusted my latest psu to a tad over 12v. Well now that one failed. So for a while I will run p4/p24 off of one psu to see if that helps. Who know maybe running low cpu core volts and low speed contributes. I was running at 150 core speed with 6 multiplication factor so thats 900 mhz. I run v core at a tad under 1 volt.
Now all have to do is figure out how to back up my MBR.
A big thanks to Douwe01nl and Ryelands for all their help.
Edits: 02/01/12
I do not think that turning the voltage down does it. I think it is the minimal work we give them to do and maybe the added caps.
I think the less you ask of a switcher the harder life becomes for the thing. I think they like to work around 80% capacity. We are asking for something like 20% with the EA430, if that much. I think this is as hard on it as working at full power.
Does it have to sink the extra/unneeded power within itself? I have no idea and am lapsing into my bad poetry explanations again.
I also wonder if adding all of the these capacitors does something that the switcher does not really like?
Ted, you should make yourself a linear supply for the P12. Not hard at all. If you can solder I can give you an easy list of parts that will make it easy, including circuit boards. P24 is just three of the same supplies when you are ready to have some real fun!
Rick yes I would appreciate if you sent me copies of schematics and parts list for the linear psu's you built.
Give me a day or so to make it easy for you.
,
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/missinghaldll.htm
Thanks but yes I read that and did all of the mentioned actions...still not booting.
I sometimes got the HAL-error when i edited the partition-sizes, or installed dualboot OS's. Errors occurred especially when using windows disk management (no promblems since i use gparted).
In this cases the MBR (Master Boot Record) was corrupted. I never succeeded in repairing the MBR. I use True Image 2011 for imaging the OS-partition(s); it can also recover the MBR. Very nice feature, just put back the former MBR and ready to go again.
I don't know which imaging program you use, but this could maybe a solution.
Other possible direction:
If the OS was build on a HDD, then copied to SSD, you could try this.
- make backup image of OS
- using gparted, move the OS-partition 1Mb. So free space preceding the OS-partition will be 1MB.
- restore the OS
Maybe MBR can now find the first Windows-sector again.
link: http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows
Another idea:
- make a new, fresh, nLite install (only 15 minutes). A new MBR is set up.
- reload minimized image
I would try this one first.
I hope this can be of any help, HAL-errors are ugly.
Good luck!!
'...In this cases the MBR (Master Boot Record) was corrupted. I never succeeded in repairing the MBR. I use True Image 2011 for imaging the OS-partition(s); it can also recover the MBR. Very nice feature, just put back the former MBR and ready to go again.
I don't know which imaging program you use, but this could maybe a solution...'
This certainly sounds plausible. I use Snapshot and have reloaded OS images many times with success. But after this hal error nothing seems to work. Can you say more about how you reloaded a MBR image? I take it that the MBR is on the HD ? If so why wouldn't just reloading an OS image do the same thing? Anyway this is my only lead. Thanks again.
according to specs Snapshot can restore MBR, so you could try this before doing a new install.
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/restdos.htm
MBR is the first physical sector of a harddisk, which functions as a content-table of the harddisk. It contents all info about the partitions on the disk(partition names, where they start end end, etc), and points to the first sector of each partition, so your computer knows where to go for startup instructions (boot.ini). So when it cant find this, due to corrupted MBR or corrupted first partition-sector, it won't boot. XP then reports very confusingly that hall.dll is missing.
Reloding an OS image would not reload the MBR, as this is not in the physical partition. You'll have to do this separately.
hope this helps, good luck!
Very helpful I believe this may be the answer. One more question is there another way to reconstruct the MBR on my ssd? I can certainly access it via a docking station on my desktop pc.
I re-read the Snapshot website on restoring an image and apparantly you can re build an MBR or whole sector by a simple right click in the restore process. I did this for the MBR and the whole sector separately and after both attempts I still got the Hal error during boot. I will try the n-lite version but am skeptical now.
it should be possible. I assume the dock is SATA.
But i think, if you have a small XP iso, it is faster and easier to do a fresh install & reload your own image.
I looked at snapshot: difficult dos commands and all. True Image it's just ticking a box. Easy.
I looked at snapshot: difficult dos commands and all.Not so. Snapshot has a perfectly good GUI. I've no idea whether it's still a better program than TrueImage but it certainly was when I first bought it some years ago. (We won't even talk about Norton's "Ghost" which, dammit, I paid good money for.)
True, I have in the past configured Snapshot to perform an automatic restore using a bootable floppy and a batch file but that was a facility for the non-technical, not a limitation of the program. That was way back in the days of the floppy disk and is no longer necessary as the program can now restore a boot partition.
More recently, I've seen me dozens of times get locked out of a cMP^2 machine and be back up and running in two or three minutes, ne'er a DOS command in sight.
D
Edits: 02/01/12 02/01/12
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