Is my hard drive physically bad, or is just the file structure bad? CHKDSK error.

I'm getting a "drive consistency check" and "check not performed" error message on a light blue screen everytime I boot up my Vostro 1000 laptop running WinXP.

I originally posted this months ago in

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19341558/19731848.aspx#19731848

I ran the quick hard drive check, then the longer hard drive check. The hard drive passed.

I went into Recovery Console, and ran CHKDSK, but got an "HAL.DLL file missing or corrupt" error.

So I copied the HAL.DLL from the Dell WinXP disk, and I'm still getting the error.

I went to the pcsupport.about.com website, and tried to replace the HAL.DLL and BOOT.INI files. Fail. It says I need the administrator's password, when there isn't one. I tried everything trying (cleared password, made new password) to get this to work. No good.

--> The newest information - i made a clone disk copy of my hard drive using Acronis True Image to a new drive. But I'm wondering whether this drive will work.

If the problem of the original disk is a physical platter problem, then the new disk should run great.

But if the file structure on the disk is the problem, I'll still have a problem with the new disk because I cloned the old disk to the new disk.

I just don't want to start swapping drives and possibly messing something else up.

Any help and ideas would be greatly appreciated!

TIA - Paul