Installing XP?

[nichos]

Made a mess editing boot.ini of my dual-boot Acer Aspire One netbook so that XP boots first & now will not boot in XP, giving error:-

"Windows root>\system32\hal.dll is missing please re-install a copy".

Note that it boots in Ubuntu 11.04 OK, but not in XP.

I cannot install "hall.dll" but, I have XP home on a stick.

1. Can I reinstate the ACER now to manufacturer's condition? or

2. How do I go about reinstalling XP?

 

[yasir siddiqui]

if you are using another window e.g. win 7 then go win 7,
Insert windows xp cd and search file hall.dll
then copy hall.dll to <Windows root>\system32\
start win xp and you see no errors.

 

[nichos]

No win 7, & how to get into <Windows root>\system32\ if XP do not boot to see the windows root.

If you know a way of seeing the Windows root I can perhaps find hal.dll some other way.

 

[nichos]

Luckily on the last reboot I noticed a linux menu with 4-5 option, & one was "Acer eRecovery Management" which did my USB XP installation all on its own giving the option to save & install all files & programs.

Then, I went & installed Ubuntu 11.04 from my USB stick but, now on boot-up it does not give the XP boot.ini Menu I had before but, the "GNU GRUB" menu with 11 choices for Ubuntu (default) or XP, which is very complicated.

The rub now is how do I change the default to XP?

Any easy way?

 

[nichos]

SOLVED

by These:-
You can change the default menu
entry to boot by either going to the

/boot/grub/grub.cfg file and near the top of the file changing the entry: set

default="0" to another number. Count the menuentry lines until you get to xp.

Put that number in the set default. Grub counts in this case from zero, so if

your xp is the 5tn entry, put a 4 there.

To keep grub with default boot set to XP, you may use the GRUB_DEFAULT option
on /etc/default/grub (as already said by yancek) or change the
/etc/grub.d/30_os-prober file order.

Then :-
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub ...This brings up grub in editor & change to what ever No. you require.

sudo update-grub ..........this in a new terminal updates Grub.