Hello,
I have a HP laptop. Its about 2.5 years old. It won't boot from hard disk. I get an error about operating system being not able to find hal.dll file. So I tried to boot from the cd that I got from HP. I was able to boot from CD and got to command prompt. I tried to access directories but access was denied and couldn't copy my files.

So I tried to repair/install operating system. Instead of overwriting existing operating system, I installed a new version (I have XP home service pack 2) because I wasn't sure if I will loose my old files or not. So now I am able to boot from hard disk (I see option to select two xp operating system at the time of boot and I have to select second one). When I try to open my files on the computer (my documents), laptop hangs up and then I get a blue screen with memory dump.

All I want to do is to retrieve my files from this computer and then throw it away. But I think some sectors on hard drive are corrupted which is why I am having problem accessing these files.

I tried to find hal.dll file on operating system cd and couldn't find it. I am not able to copy this folder and paste on a USB drive (this is when I get blue screen). If I go into safe mode command prompt, I can go into the my documents directory structure but then I don't have USB drive to copy the files to.

Does anyone have any solution for this? I have another laptop at home. Is there anyway to connect the two and just suck all the files from my corrupt hard disk laptop to good laptop?

Thank you for help in advance.

Jay

Configuration: Windows XP
Firefox 3.0.5