hal.dll error

[mlarj]

I have a small (3mb) partiton on the hard disk which connects to the network, calls the XP installation with an unattended file.

The problem I have is...

After the XP installation files have been copied from the network, on first reboot I get the message :

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: windows\system32\hal.dll

The problem is that the dafault boot.ini for XP has the line :

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=

Partition 1 being my hidden 'utility' partition and hence cannot boot. Is there a way to set XP's boot partition in the unattended or similar file ? so it will boot off of a specified partition ? ie.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=

Many thanks

Mat.

[jrzycrim]

Copy an edited boot.ini during the installation.

[mlarj]

I did try that. I copied a modified boot.ini to :

i386\$oem$\C

but the same thing happened, am I putting this in the wrong place ?

[jrzycrim]

You probably need to copy it during runonceex. If it's copied over at the very beginning of the installation, then it's getting overwritten by the install process itself.

edit: Actually, runonce exe wouldn't be a good idea. During cmdlines.txt would probably be a good time to copy it over.