Did you try "bootcfg /rebuild"? I believe this actually rewrites the MBR stuff Windows is looking for and it may fix your issue. I know I've had similar issues in the past (caused by ntfsresize no less, great tool :p ) but generally I just would run a repair install after the setup process detected that I have that installation. -Adam On 05/11/2010 10:49 AM, greg wm wrote: > i grabbed a handy xubuntu-8.04-alternate-i386 cd, started the install > only to reduce ntfs from 190gb to 160gb, installed xp.pro > <http://xp.pro> in the resulting 28gb free space, which boots fine, > but on next boot of the original now 160gb xp.home-edition it ran a > fsck sort of operation during bootup, and on next boot is now > unbootable, complaining system32\hal.dll is missing or corrupt. > google wisdom mostly recommends running repair mode from the xp cd, > well my xp cd offers to install but doesn't offer any repair option, > anyway i found testdisk-6.12 which probably did as much as fixboot > would have, checked that the partition boot sector matched the backup, > regenerated it from scratch anyway, boot.ini is fine, substituting a > hal.dll from xp.pro <http://xp.pro> doesn't help, possibly a new > hal.dll from xp.home-edition might work but my bet is that ntfsresize > didn't do the right thing with a disk that i'm guessing has a guid > partition table. any help or ideas anyone? > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >