xp pro os cd wont boot from my CD ROM drive

Welcome to the forums :emotion-21:

hello everyone i have this very annoying problem and i need some help. im trying to reformat my computer but i ran into a couple of problems.   1.  the os cd when i put it in my cd rom drive does not boot from the cd rom. seems like the computer does not detect the cd rom drive.

That's almost certainly because the boot order has not been set correctly in the BIOS?

You need to go into the BIOS, and make sure the boot order is CD/DVD, hard drive, then floppy drive.

2.  my os that is currently installed with the computer will not load because i am missing my system32/hal.dll and its telling me that i need to reinstall a copy of it which i do not have and can not seem to find...

You'll find the hal.dll on the XP CD.  See here for how to copy/install it.

But it's also downloadable - from here.  Simply copy/paste it into the System32 folder.

However... given that all the problems were initially caused by a virus, you're probably best to reformat the hard drive, and reinstall the OS.

Just in case you're not confident of how to do it, see here (includes screenshots of each step) :emotion-5:

BTW:  You've said in your last sentence, that you have a Dimension 9100 with XP Home Edition?

Why then, does your thread title mention XP Pro?

that was all very informative thank you so much. i mention xp pro cause thats the operating system cd i have and thats hat im going to use to reformat. well i cant get my os to boot everytime it does it gives me the hal.dll error and well i can get onto my desktop and therefore i cant get onto my browser and i cant download it. so that is where i am stuck and the xp pro cd doesnt seem to boot maybecause the comp wont detect my cd rom drive the boot sequence is right but it just wont boot. gahh i dontknow what else to do thank you though if u know anything else please let meknow therealfireblade

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