At boot, I am now getting the following message: "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the above file”.  How do I do that when the PC is otherwise dead???

It is a Dell E510, Intel Pent D 820 Dual Core 2.8Ghz 1 Gig DDR2 SDRAM @ 533Mhz, 80 Gig SATA, 48x CD-RW/DVD, External 48x RW\CDR via USB.  OS is MS XP Media Center Ed 2005 – not my personal choice but that is the only OS Dell made available for the PC that had the options I wanted.  I’m using WIFI from ViewSonic to network with an older Dell PC that I’m using right now.

The dead PC came with no discs for programs preloaded by Dell, and NO RECOVERY DISC. Noda, zip, zilch.  If you didn’t know, Dell no longer sends out CDs of ANYTHING.  I have no XP-Media Center discs, and (my goof) I never made a recovery disc.

I DO have MS XP Home Edition Upgrade that I used to upgrade an old PC from W98 I no longer have and a Dell OS Disc to reinstall the XP Home Edition on the Dell PC I’m using now.  I don’t know if either of them will work appropriately with a XP Media Center Edition machine.

I have looked at the menu’s for F8, F12 and Ctr/lF11 but I’m years and years behind the power curve so a lot of it is technobable.  I note that two options will reset the machine back to factory settings BUT all data will be lost.  My backups are not daily but weekly and I will be deleting five days of work not saved to other media.  Since the PC is dead, I doubt that I can copy data from it to this PC via WIFI as the dead one is the host or server or whatever is the correct nomenclature.

I’ve found several Internet  sites about system32\hal.dll problems but, naturally, no problems like mine.

How do I boot up what is now a dead terminal without a Recovery Disc or some other form of OS?

I think either disk would probably work to repair your Windows installation.
Try the method outlined in this knowledge base article.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

Good luck. If you have any questions regarding the method, I'll try to answer them.

Thank you for the reply.

Having dug even more into knowledge bases and using the MS Help file on this PC, I have been leaning toward trying exactly as you suggested.  Woe is me for not having made a recovery disc (built in to one of Ray's apps, I believe).  Back in the day, I would have stuck my Win95 or W98 system disk into the a:\ drive, booted, found the *.dll file in the c:\Backup or copied one from the Internet and copied it into the correct directory.  Sometimes, those WERE good old days...  Progress - bah!

   That error message is often given when the boot.ini file has incorrect settings in it.  I would look at the boot.ini file in the root directory of the boot drive and make sure that it is pointing to the location of Windows.  It is probably just a matter of changing a 0 to a 1 or vice versa.  There is more information online about the settings in boot.ini.
   If you had made an XP boot disk with WinRescue XP, it could be used to boot the computer around that.
   We also have XP Recovery CD Maker which can make a boot CD on another computer with Windows XP and then be used on that computer.  Or you could use PEBuilder to make a boot CD.  Our Maker and PEBuilder only make CDs on Windows installations that have a i386 folder (with the proper files) in Windows.

Thanks dlwolff0 and Ray.  Problem is now resolved and here is how:

In this instance, the BOOT.INI on the root c: drive was misconfigured.  Forgive my roughly done documentation.  By this time I was tired and discouraged so my notes were very brief.

1.  Turn on the PC
2.  While booting, press F12
3.  Select drive to boot from by using the up-down arrows.  In my case I selected USB CD drive which is an external CD-R.  I inserted the Dell Windows XP-CD for my older Dell PC.
4.  Press "Enter".  You should get a splash screen with info that Windows is being installed and you will see a number of files being loaded.  This takes a few minutes to complete.
5.  A new screen with 3 choices - Install XP - Repair XP - Exit.  Enter R.
6.  A DOS type of screen will come up showing your OS as #1.  Enter 1.
7.  You should now have C:\(Windows) on the screen.
8.  Type in after C:\(Windows) the following line:
bootcfg /rebuild (Note the space between letter g and the forward slash
9.  The boot configuration file will start to be rebuilt.  A number of lines of general information will show up but not to worry.
10. When it is finished it will ask you if you want the new configuration saved.  Options are Yes/No/All.  Enter Y for yes.  several other fields will pop up for which I hit the 'Enter' key.
11.  Remove the CD while the system reboots and you should be back in business.

Now, all appears to be OK after 3 successive reboots (1 restart and 2 cold).

Thanks again.