The other day my fiance's laptop and mine both mysteriously had the same problem. His internet wasn't working and after restarting it he got an error message saying that he was missing <windows root>\system32\hal.dll. After doing some research I ended up doing a fresh install of windows and it worked so that I was able to still keep all of his files.
My computer was fine at first and then it just shut down and when I tried to restart I get the Dell screen, and then a black screen with a blinking cursor on the top left hand corner. I tried unplugging the charger and removing the battery and holding down the power button because that used to work in the past, but it didn't this time. So I tried to do a reinstall of windows on my computer as well, but when it gets to the part where it restarts the computer to finish the setup, my computer goes right back to the black screen. It doesn't let me start in safe mode, when I hit f8 nothing happens. I can't lose all my files, I have all my wedding stuff on their with the guest list and addresses... I've looked on this site and plenty of others and haven't found anything. Someone please help!
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What it sounds like is the computer doesn't know where to boot from. In your BIOS settings, the priority lists that the computer should try to boot from a USB device before it tries to boot from a hard drive.
Jun 28, 2010 at 07:32 PM
1. Diskette drive
2. Internal hdd
3. Cd/dvd/cd-rw drive
4. Usb storage device
Cardbus nic
Onboard nic
So it's not trying to boot from the usb first. I don't have anything connected to the laptop at all.