I recently purchased a 500g hard drive.  Using Partition Magic I created several partitions.  I installled Win XP on the first partition with no problem.  I always make my hard drives multi-boot.  This gives me other systems to experiment with software.
I can install new systems on partitions up to 6.  If I try to install on partitions 7 or 8 I get always get I of two errors when I boot:  (In summary) "disk hardware configuration problem.  Can't read from selected disk" or another message concerning the hal.dll file.  Investigation has revealed that both issues concern the hal.dll file.  I've tried extracting the hal.dll file from the Win XP setup disk and get a message can't create hal.dll.  There used to be a 137g limit on hard drives.  but that was before 48 bit addressing.  I've contacted several other forums and the Microsoft website.  I've gotten some real quirky suggestion but so far nothing plausible.  I'm sure that with the intelligence and experience of you folks this problem can, if not answered, be explained.

Thanks in advance

Please people I need answers based on insight.  Not just guesses.

There's usually an obvious answer.
My suggestion in this case is that the
boot manager has a limit of six OSs.

No that's definately not the case. Or the problem

Not really an expert on multi-booting but could it
depend on whether the OSs are installed in a primary
or an extended partition?

I recently accidently restored a backup of XP Pro onto
an extended partition and wondered why I was offered
a choice when I next booted.  Didn't know it would do
that.

MS has a virtual machine prog. which is free.  Have you
tried it?  Apparently saves the bother of rebooting to change
OSs.

Virtual Machine only works on XP Pro. Not on Home

Just  question before an eventually long answer ; does your hard disc  have RAID or more probably , is it a SATA drive ?
Second question , if the answer is yes ;when did you buy your orginal CD For windows home ? namely , at the time or SP1 , prior to it ?
These questions may seem completely martian but if you answer I promise you a very nice answer to your problem (?!!!)

I have neither raid nor sata.

Thanks for the thought

I Win Xp with SP2, Win XP pre SP1, and Win XP MCE with SP1.  It's obviously not an XP issue.  It's startin to lean toward MBR issues.

How much memory do you have? On the Partition Magic page it states that it works with drives up to 300 GB, above that additional memory may be required.
This comes from the faq's for version 8 [probably applies to most recent versions]:
#49 Write fault
#50 Read fault
(The following information applies to errors 49 and 50.)
PartitionMagic is unable to write to/read from a specific sector on the hard disk. Possible causes include:
If your PC beeps or displays a black box in the middle of the screen, virus protection is enabled in your computer's BIOS. Disable virus or boot sector protection in the BIOS.
A virus protection application (which may be a TSR or DLL program) is in use. Disable the application before using PartitionMagic.
There is a bad sector on the hard disk (this is usually the case only with older hard disks). Run ScanDisk on the hard disk to perform a surface scan to verify the existence of bad sectors. If your drive has bad sectors, we recommend you replace it.
You have set up disk mirroring with PC-Tools. Disable the disk mirroring option.

If none of the above apply, the problem may be in the MBR.

The problem may also be with the partition order of the operating systems. If partition 1 is Win XP Pro, then you may have to hide it before you can install XP Home.
I remember this from running Win2k, when I wanted to add Win98SE as a dual boot option, using Partition Commander, I had to hide the Win2k partition before I could install Win98SE since it is considered a downgrade by Microsoft.

I can store and read files of the full 500g.  Partition Magic has nothing to do with it.  PM handled the partitioning just fine.  The Win XP disk manager reads all of  the partitions just fine.

   An error mentioning hal.dll is usually caused by a problem with the boot.ini file and has nothing to do with hal.dll.  This error message is given when the boot.ini file is not pointing to the correct partition.  So I would suggest that you look at the boot.ini file and make sure that the operating systems that you are having problems with are pointing to the correct partitions.

I certainly agree that the hal.dll problem is usually associated with the boot.ini file.  However in this case it is not.
And I certailnly don't know where to turn.  I can install in every partition up to 6.  Partition 7 is a backup drive.
I can not install in partitions 8 or 9.  I get the same results on each.  I've run chkdsk on both partitions and even
defragmented both and find no errors.  I have made sure that the boot.ini is set for disk 0, partitions 8 and 9.  I think
that a clue to the problem is that when I try to expand the hal.dll file from the CD I get an error message that
says that the hal.dll can not be created.  I think if I can figure out the reason for this, the problem will be resolved.
Do you agree?

I did do some research on the Microsoft website and found that there is an issue similar to mine mentioned there.
However, none of their solutions work for me.  I keep remembering the old 137g limit that existed before the 48 bit
LBA.  There just seems to be an upper cut off for allowing an installation.  Do you think that there is any substance
in this thought.

Thank You Ever so Much

Try moving the backup drive to partition 9 and see if you can then install in 7 and 8. Just a suggestion. Sometimes this type of software can be very quirky.

Thank you for the suggestion.  But I've already done that and get the same results.

Well, I now know what's causing the problem.  I don't know the solution, but at least the problems is known.  My BIOS is not set to read the larger drives.  I've installed Maxtor's Big Drive Enabler and that didn't fix it.  I wonder if there are any similar programs or if anyone knows how to fix it in Windows.

Thanks

   BIOS can be set to read large drives.  All you have to do is enter BIOS at startup and change the settings so that it will read larger drives.  But that may not be the problem.
   The problem could be that your BIOS was not made to handle that big of harddrive.  This is true of older computers.
   BIOS can be upgraded to handle bigger drives.  You will need to do a search for your BIOS on the internet and see what is available.  Some upgrades are free but most will cost you money.  Please be aware that upgrading the BIOS may not work and since the BIOS is such a vital part of your computer ruining your BIOS could ruin your computer.
   Your best bet may be to get a new computer and put the harddrive on it.