markgrubb
Leading a life of quiet desperation
I bought a PC 7 weeks ago from PC world-things worked fine until one evening when my daughter was playing a SIMS game and the PC crashed. Ever since the error message, Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt, windows root\system32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the missing file. I looked up MSN knowledge base and the error was only linked to an OS upgrade so this was no help
Rather lazily I had not backed up my email/docs( I have them on external hard drive from my old PC) as it was a new PC. I wanted if possible to restore them so was reluctant to use the recovery discs. I took the PC to PC World and they looked at it. They felt initially that the SIMS game was responsible for the crash. They accessed the hard drive to back up the files but found that My Docs seemed to have disappeared. They found the email OK. I went in to see what they had done and asked why My Docs might have been wiped. They said it may have been a virus, despite the fact that I have Norton that is automatically updated. They said they would restore my email and get the PC running.
However they phoned yesterday to say they had found a hardware fault and that there was a problem with a memory module(RAM) and that they would get an engineer to replace this and that this was the cause of my problems. However when I got off the phone I thought about things and as far as I understand the RAM is the memory that the PC uses when the PC is running. How could this cause My Docs to vanish?
So I’ve had 3 explanations for what has gone on-SIMS causes crash/virus/memory problem. Has anyone any thoughts on what has happened?
Rather lazily I had not backed up my email/docs( I have them on external hard drive from my old PC) as it was a new PC. I wanted if possible to restore them so was reluctant to use the recovery discs. I took the PC to PC World and they looked at it. They felt initially that the SIMS game was responsible for the crash. They accessed the hard drive to back up the files but found that My Docs seemed to have disappeared. They found the email OK. I went in to see what they had done and asked why My Docs might have been wiped. They said it may have been a virus, despite the fact that I have Norton that is automatically updated. They said they would restore my email and get the PC running.
However they phoned yesterday to say they had found a hardware fault and that there was a problem with a memory module(RAM) and that they would get an engineer to replace this and that this was the cause of my problems. However when I got off the phone I thought about things and as far as I understand the RAM is the memory that the PC uses when the PC is running. How could this cause My Docs to vanish?
So I’ve had 3 explanations for what has gone on-SIMS causes crash/virus/memory problem. Has anyone any thoughts on what has happened?