Samsung nc10 bootloader corruption?

clairemcbear

I had windows xp on it and got the infamous 'hal.dll is missing or corrupt' message,decided to upgrade to windows 7 instead of reinstalling windows xp and after a reboot got the windows 7 equivilant error message,launched system recovery wizard and I was forced to use system restore. Any idea what could be wrong,why is this a persistant problem? could the hard drive be on the way out? Laptop is only a few weeks old and I take very good care of it. Anxious to get it back to full health ha

cpu-dude

clairemcbear wrote: »

I had windows xp on it and got the infamous 'hal.dll is missing or corrupt' message,decided to upgrade to windows 7 instead of reinstalling windows xp and after a reboot got the windows 7 equivilant error message,launched system recovery wizard and I was forced to use system restore. Any idea what could be wrong,why is this a persistant problem? could the hard drive be on the way out? Laptop is only a few weeks old and I take very good care of it. Anxious to get it back to full health ha

You need to delete all the partitions, leave it just as blank space and let Windows format the drive itself (it puts 100MB aside for the MBR). Use this guide here on how to get Windows 7 bootable off a USB and install it that way.

clairemcbear

Thanks,but I did install from usb stick and it did set aside 100mb...I really don't know what's up with it

cpu-dude

clairemcbear wrote: »

Thanks,but I did install from usb stick and it did set aside 100mb...I really don't know what's up with it

You should start from scratch, load the USB, delete all the partitions and install it again. After the first reboot during the installation, take out the USB and let it do it's thing. Then after that, tell us what's happening. I've done this twice this week alone with an NC10 and another same spec netbook - I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

clairemcbear

When I installed it I had the boot priority set as follows;
1.removable usb
2.internal HDD

so maybe the boot loader is confused as it thinks the usb drive was a fixed drive?

But that doesn't explain why it's a random problem,I have since restarted it ONCE and went ok..i'll try some more.
How do I access the windows 7 equivalent of boot.ini? Cant seem to find it

cpu-dude

clairemcbear wrote: »

When I installed it I had the boot priority set as follows;
1.removable usb
2.internal HDD

so maybe the boot loader is confused as it thinks the usb drive was a fixed drive?

But that doesn't explain why it's a random problem,I have since restarted it ONCE and went ok..i'll try some more.
How do I access the windows 7 equivalent of boot.ini? Cant seem to find it

There is no boot.ini with Windows 7. After Vista, a new setup calls bcdedit.exe is used (I use Easy BCD to manage it).

Don't change any BIOS settings, reset them back to their defaults and do the following.

1 - Plug in the Windows 7 Bootable USB and turn on the PC.
2 - Repeatedly press F12 on your keyboard to get to the boot select screen.
3 - Select your USB stick and press enter.
4 - Let Windows 7 load normally (picture 1) and select "Custom (Advanced)" (picture 2).
5 - From here, select "Drive options (advanced)" and delete every partition leaving unpartition space of 149GB (approx) (picture 3).
6 - Click "Next" and let Windows 7 do it's thing (picture 4).
7 - When the computer restarts, remove the USB stick.
8 - Now the Windows 7 installation will continue so leave it be until done (picture 5).

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5.