[SOLVED] Two bootloaders. Hal.dll error.

[Idiolatry]

Hi guys, thanks for any and all help.

My problem: I reinstalled Ubuntu on a dual boot machine, XP being the other OS. Ubuntu loads just fine from Grub but, if I select Windows, it takes me to another bootloader that has "Windows XP", Ubuntu, and "Windows (Default)" as options. If I select Windows XP or Windows (Default), I get "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." followed by my computer rebooting.

What I'd like to do is get rid of that second bootloader. I've reinstalled Grub, set boot.ini in XP to default, set the BIOS boot to default. I do have an XP disc if that'd be necessary.

I'm not even sure if it'll boot into XP just from Grub and the second bootloader is screwing everything up.

Am I even on the right track? If anyone could point me in a direction that'd be great.

Thanks again.

[Lostfarmer]

Need to see the hdd partition structure.
run from linux 'fdisk -l' l is a small L

Before you reinstalled linux , did you use GRUB or XP's boot.ini to select OS to boot ?

[Idiolatry]

Hi, Lost. Thanks for your help.

When I run fdisk -l (Lowercase L, not i), it appears to do nothing.

idiolatry@idiolatry-desktop:~$ fdisk -l
idiolatry@idiolatry-desktop:~$ fdisk

Usage: fdisk [-l] [-b SSZ] [-u] device
E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda (for the first IDE disk)
or: fdisk /dev/sdc (for the third SCSI disk)
or: fdisk /dev/eda (for the first PS/2 ESDI drive)
or: fdisk /dev/rd/c0d0 or: fdisk /dev/ida/c0d0 (for RAID devices)

sfdisk -l (Lowercase L, not i) shows nothing, either.

Before reinstall, I used Grub. I had a working version of Ubuntu 8.04 and a working version of Windows XP, both bootable from Grub. Then, I booted from a Live CD for Ubuntu 9.04. I went to manual partition, deleted the old partition for Ubuntu 8.04. For the root of the partition, I made it "/". Is that correct?

I, then, followed through with installing Ubuntu 9.04 and have since had the two bootloaders. The first one looks exactly like the Grub did before when I had the functional boot for Ubuntu and XP.

Okay, I just rebooted to see exactly what the second bootloader says and, it's not there anymore LOL. But, I'm still getting the hal.dll error.

I reinstalled hal.dll and, still received the error. I started fiddling around with the boot.ini once more and have fixed the problem.

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

was what the boot.ini said when I was having the problem. I changed "partition(2)" to "partition(1)" in both cases. Now, XP boots up just fine.

Thanks again, Lost.