Parallels boots, but Boot Camp doesn't..?

Hello!

I've had a boot camp installation for a while, that used to work really well (a long time ago.) then I installed Parallels and mostly used it because my Windows usage is really limited. Yesterday I decided to boot in windows (with boot camp) but I got the following error:

"systemroot/system32/hal.dll file missing or corrupted"

So I rebooted in OSX, tried Parallels again, which worked fine. So I now have a Parallels installation working fine, but it just won't let me boot in Boot Camp. I google'd a bit and saw a lot of people trying to fix the file using the Windows CDs but they didn't get any luck (and I can't try myself because I don't have my Windows CD right now)

Any other tip?

Thanks!

Without getting into a long drawn out explanation of what happened....

The "boot.ini" file which resides in the root of drive c in your Boot Camp partition has either become corrupt or missing. That file is a pointer file which tells Windows where its boot files are and where the system files are located.

Windows can't find "hal.dll" (it's not missing) because of the boot.ini file. You need to edit boot.ini and correct it. The boot.ini file is a hidden system file and is in plain text format.

Go here for an explanation of boot.ini and its parameters:

How to Use and Edit Boot.ini in Windows XP

Regards.