well, I did read and do all the stuff on the link page kellys corner. I had taken the second drive out right away when my system wouldn't boot. I had a different slave drive before. I took it out and installed the old one, which was also configured as slave. What I have is my main hard drive with a 25gig partition which is only system stuff. The remainder id for programs. Now, even after reformatting that partition, the OS install copies files and then does a reboot. When it reboots, that error of the missing or corrupted hal.dll comes up...over and over. I deleted the boot.ini, rebuilt the bootcfg, etc etc ...many times. its as if there is something not being erased .... As far as reformatting, I tried desparately not to. I lost a tonn of personal pictures of family, all me email and some other stuff, sch as web page etc... and yes, I feel about as stupid as possible for that, as I knew the stuff shoudl have been backed up. Now I'm wondering if I will fget it going again.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854