Comments on: Do you know where your HAL.DLL is?

By: Conor

Conor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:24:55 +0000

HAL.dll?

IM SORRY NED
I CANT ALLOW YOU TO DO THAT

NED?
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, NED?

DAISY, DAIIISSSSSYY, NOW THAT I’M WITH YOU, I’M HALF CRAZZZZYYY EEEUURRRGGHHHHARRRRGHEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

etc etc
:D

By: Ned

Ned — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:45:12 +0000

You’re right Mike that with a name like HAL.DLL, they could have been a little more creative with the message. Although I must confess to being pretty humorless when confronted with screens like that. Anyway, the problem is solved… see my note above if you’re interested.

By: Mike O

Mike O — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:18:02 +0000

Or, were you alluding to this:
http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?sid=7847204&loc=es_rss

I’m not sure that is indicated for the Python-Lehrer manifestation of Tourette’s.

By: Mike O

Mike O — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:25:59 +0000

And, it would have been nice if the error message had opened with “I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Dave.”

By: Mike O

Mike O — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:29:22 +0000

I feel like the wide-eyed student here, but I went over to the About page and it pointed to another page explaining how to replace your HAL.DLL file with a clean version from the Windows CD, and that page pointed to a sponsored link to a DLL cleaner by some smug computer wonk with a bad opinion of people with DLL problems. Interested, I went over to the Wiki and found:
“Hal.dll is the core of Windows’ Hardware Abstraction Layer, which allows applications to access devices in the system without knowledge of the specific protocol used by any one device.

Although drivers for most hardware are contained in external files, core drivers (which are required to support the kernel) are compiled into Hal.dll. Different sets of drivers may be selected depending on whether the system uses multiple processors, the presence of an ACPI-compatible BIOS or an Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC), etc.”

This leads me to believe that the DynaVox software wants so badly to be run on the DynaVox computer that it is trying to convince your computer it’s wrong about it’s harware. Maybe DynaVox is trying to do one of them continue-installation-after-reboot dealies and is replacing your hal.dll and/or boot.ini files before Windows has the chance to read them (?)

Sorry that’s not a solution, but maybe someone wiser than me can take it from here.

By: Ned

Ned — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:16:34 +0000

I tried to use a restore point. It all looked like it was working, but at the end, the curtain went up and there was a sign that said “We were unable to revert to your restore point. No files were changed.”

How much for the bunnies?

By: Steve Eddins

Steve Eddins — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:37:26 +0000

Hi Ned. How about booting off the Windows CD and then reverting back to a previous system restore point? If that doesn’t work, we have some flower-eating rabbits in our yard you can sacrifice.