Missing HAL.DLL, Invalid Boot.ini

Windows XP:

I have come across "Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll", or "Invalid Boot.Ini" several times and it's actually a really easy fix. I found these steps on an information week article.

Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
Run "Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini"
Delete the C:\Boot.ini file
Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild"
Run "Fixboot"

Article:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=185301251

Side note:
If you are using Vista you can boot to the CD and choose "repair your system" and then "startup repair". Thats it, vista should auto repair your boot up problem.

Ghost 8.0 and Microsoft Vista

Ghost, Vista:

I came across something interesting with Ghost8 and vista today... It turns out that vista uses a new boot manager that ties itself to both the drives signature and to the partition, so if either one of these change it will freak out and make you do a startup repair with your installation CD. Luckily there are people out there much smarter then myself and I was able to find a work around.

I found this at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=181082&SiteID=1

written by Alan Adams

Preparing a Vista installation prior to creating the Ghost image then becomes a task of setting the DEVICE and OSDEVICE entries of the BCD entries you intend to use:

Logon as Administrator [run Command Prompt as Administrator] and from a command prompt invoke the following changes:
BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

Note you can "fix" a previously restored (and currently failing to boot) installation using a PE boot disc and executing these same actions against the restored partition's BCD entries.

There may be more entires that you need to fix if you intend to use them ({memtest}, {legacy}, etc.). The above is just the minimum for my own scenario where there is just a clean Vista-only OS installation on the partition.

Using a proxy for apt-get in Debian

Linux Debian:

A quick and easy way to get apt-get to work with a proxy in Debian...

Place the following code into the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/proxy

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://proxy:8080";

Thumbnails not working in windows 2000

I had a strange problem with windows 2000 today... No JPG thumbnails would show... It would just show a box with the associated program icon in it... I found a nice Microsoft KB article that fixed the problem...

PS. you can fix GIF files by doing the same changes to .gif


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243401