i bought the computer off of a friend an he didnt have the disks my computer is a compaq presario 5170 please help :(

I don't recall if THAT model came with 98 or ME, but, the CAB files SHOULD be on the hard drive. If I remember right, Compaq put them on a seperate partition. If not, in a folder marked CABS. Try booting into DOS and explore the hard drive. Once you find the CABS folder you should be able to extract the file you need.

 

Another problem might be with the boot.ini. I'm pretty sure hal.dll (Hardware Abstraction Layer) is an XP file, and can get messed up if one trys a dual boot setup, or tries installing the same OS twice.

 

So you might be stuck with doing either A: a FULL REINSTALL, or B: use the worthless and limited recovery console, if you like typing alot.

 

Then there is also C: try downloading and replacing it from here:

 

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

 

Or your final option of D: call compaq and buy a restore CD from them.

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