Hello.  I posted this in another tech forum but I need a good answer.  Recently I attempted to partition my HDD for a dual-boot with XP Home Edition and Windows 7RC. I used the program EASEUS Partition Master to partition about half of my HDD for Win 7. Everything was working fine. It finished the partition and asked me to reboot. I got past my motherboard screen with the BIOS and Boot menus but then I get a black screen that says:

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

Can anyone DIAGNOSE my problem? I have a feeling my computer does not know which partition to boot off of but I am not sure. I am very new to Operating systems so please explain in an easy to understand way.

Edit:  I forgot to mention I do NOT have the original XP Recovery CD.

Thanks a lot everyone!!! 
If you have Windows CD...(if you don't have Windows CD, scroll down)

1. Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD and ASSURE that your CD-ROM drive is capable of booting the CD.
2. Once you have booted from CD, do NOT select the option that states: Press F2 to initiate the Automated System Recovery (ASR) tool.
You’re going to proceed until you see the following screen, at which point you will press the “R” key to ENTER the recovery console:



3. After you have selected the appropriate option from step two, you will be prompted to select a valid Windows installation (typically number “1″).
Select the installation number, and hit Enter.
If there is an administrator password for the administrator account, enter it and hit Enter (if asked for the password, and you don't know it, you're out of luck).
You will be greeted with this screen, which indicates a recovery console at the ready:



4. There are eight commands you must enter in sequence to repair your problem..
I will introduce them here, and then show the results graphically in the next six steps.
NOTE. Make sure, you press Enter after each command. Make sure, all commands are exact, including "spaces".
These commands are as follows:

CD..
ATTRIB -H C:\\boot.ini
ATTRIB -S C:\\boot.ini
ATTRIB -R C:\\boot.ini
del boot.ini
BOOTCFG /Rebuild

Note about the above command.
BOOTCFG /REBUILD command which searches for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a LITANY of common Windows errors.
It is very important that you do one or both of the following two things:
A.) Every Windows XP owner must use /FASTDETECT as OS Load Option when the rebuild process is finalizing.
B.) If you are the owner of a CPU featuring Intel’s XD or AMD’s NX buffer overflow protection, you must also use /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN as an OS Load Option.
For the Enter Load Identifier portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system you have installed.
If, for example, you are using Windows XP Home, you could type Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for the identifier (it's not crucial, however what the name is, as long, as it's MEANINGFUL).
Here is your computer screen:



5. Following command verifies the integrity of the hard drive containing the Windows XP installation. While this step is not an essential function in our process, it’s still good to be sure that the drive is physically capable of running windows, in that it contains no bad sectors or other corruptions that might be the culprit:

CHKDSK /R

6. This last command writes a new boot sector to the hard drive and cleans up all the loose ends we created by rebuilding the BOOT.INI file and the system files. When the Windows Recovery Console asks you if you are Sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ? just hit “Y”, then Enter to confirm your decision:

FIXBOOT

7. It’s time to reboot your PC by typing
EXIT 
and pressing Enter.

With any luck, your PC will boot successfully into Windows XP as if your various DLL, Hive, EXE and NTLDR errors never existed.



If you don't have Windows CD...
Download Windows Recovery Console: http://www.thecomputerparamedic.com/files/rc.iso
Download, and install free Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
Using Imgburn, burn rc.iso to a CD.
Boot to the CD...let it finish loading.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Then, follow instructions from Step #3 above.Sorry for the late reply.  I have tried to make a Windows Recovery CD as you said and tried to boot off of it.  I changed all of the settings in my BIOS to boot from the optical drive and tried to reboot.  Everything was the same but after the motherboard screen, I got a solid black screen and my Optical and HDD indicator lights were flashing quickly in unison for about 10 minutes then the error message I had before came up!     Did I do something wrong when writing the CD?  I also tried to boot into Ubuntu to add the missing hal.dll file manually and got the same thing.   

Edit:  I thought it would be good to mention my computer is made by eMachines.  I'm not sure if that could be my problem.If it's eMachines, I'd start with getting new power supply unit. They're notorious for being underpowered, and malfunctioning.From his fist post it is mot clear if you had Win RC7 already on the HDD.

The only way I have been able to dual boot with Win 7 TC is to start out with Windows XP already installed and running well. Then I use the same PM he named to re size the partition to a smaller size. After it is all done, and working well, I boot up the Win 7 RC DVD and follow the instructions.  So far I have been successful two out of three tries. Quote from: Broni on July 09, 2009, 05:04:48 PM

If it's eMachines, I'd start with getting new power supply unit. They're notorious for being underpowered, and malfunctioning.

I also have been getting a CMOS battery failure message durring a boot

Replace it?