boot camp trouble

i just ordered a 24' imac, it came in yesterday and today i began running boot camp to install windows on mac. the installitation began going well but now it has stopped at a screen which says

windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>/system32\hal.dll.
please re-install a copy of the above file.

i have restarted the computer in hopes it would re-install and fix itself numerous times but that has not worked yet.

and help would be greatly appreciated.

You need to reboot from the CD, press R to enter recovery console and copy the Hal.dll from i386 folder to CWindows\system32. If the file, looks like hal.dl_ then you need to expand it e.g.
expand di386\hal.dl_ cwindows\system32\hal.dll

Hi:

The problem is not with hal.dll it's with the hidden boot.ini file in the root of c. For some reason the installer is confused about where Windows has been installed to.

The boot.ini file points the boot loader to the correct partition and drive where the Windows system files are located. Your boot.ini is either missing, corrupt, or pointing to the wrong partition. That's why the error says hal.dll is missing.

It's not missing, Windows just can't find it.

If your Boot Camp partition has been formatted to FAT-32 you may be able to correct it from OS X. If it's formatted to NTFS, you can try the recovery console to create a new boot.ini or correct the current one.

Regards.