HaloMods "Classic" Read-only Archive

Im currently typing this from a backup PC since my main rig went down last night. Im talking about complete failure. I trace the source of the issue to a instance of me de-fragmenting my hard drive not to long ago and and now my comp won't boot cause it's saying my bootmsg is compressed. The only cure for this is having the install CD and repairing it from the actual CD to which sadly I don't have.

So this is leaving me with 2 options..

A. Find someone with WinXP Pro and trying their disk.
B. Moving Forward and just going to Vista.

I think im finally going to enter the Vista age and do a complete reformat. I have a blank hard drive for a fresh install but my hopes is that everything on my main drive is not lost. I havent tried hooking it up on this machine so im not for sure yet. If the files on my main drive are fooked then FTW2 is a complete wash and I might have to begin it all over again. Hurray for me >_>

Everything is closed today and I can't talk about my alternative means cause of forum rules but people are not stupid so wish me luck I suppose. Ill make a thread in modding discussion on this since it involves FTW2's progress and people can leave comments there instead of this thread.

Best of luck to those who entered the contest and merry xmas to thoes that are celebrating today!

-Shawn

Seeing I am the first to respond, I want to say: "Well that sucks"

But in all seriousness, I think someone can come to your rescue. If I had a WinXP disc I would have sent it off to you as soon as reading this. Unfortunately:
a) on a Mac, so don't have a windows disc
b) lack your address so I cannot bring it to you
Although knowing something on how computers work I assume you can hook it up to your other comp as a data drive? If you can pop on XFire, I might be able to lend a hand. This is a question to anyone running Ubuntu: Can Ubuntu read windows formatted drives? That may be something to look into.

If all else fails you can pay Geek squad to retrieve your files for you.

Good old shawn, I could almost believe he set this up.

Pepsi ۩: least i have a reason now not to hang around family BS of fake people saying.. "omg i missed you, how have you been" >_>

But I think he has it covered now. oh btw, if anyone knows how to fit 60 gigs into 30 gigs, Pepsi has a job for you lulz.

BestBuy will not touch my PC EVER. ill fix it on my own or reformat. Im saving all my files now since I removed my HD from my main and installed it on this comp. Im going to try to do a few tricks and if it doesnt work then im going Vista prolly. But ATM i got AIM to talk to Bcnipod and ALT to kill time and give me some help tech wise troubleshooting this.

Ubuntu CAN read NTFS volumes.

To get Ubuntu, you have two options:
1. Download the iso file and burn it to a CD
2. Use "unetbootin" to download and install the iso file to a USB drive

Once you have ubuntu ready, you need to go into BIOS and change to boot order. Just make sure that CD-ROM or USB device is above Hard Drive.

A menu will come up. Choose "Try ubuntu without altering my PC" or something along those lines. It's the default option.

Once Ubuntu loads, open the Places menu. It should show all readable attached drives. Just click on one as if to open it and the drive will be automatically mounted.

Note: Ubuntu can have trouble reading from NTFS drives that had an unclean shutdown. A troubled boot sector shouldn't affect it, but if you just turned off your computer without shutting down you would need to do some repairs that windows does automatically. Google is your friend!

Grab vista. Do it.
EDIT: Or windows 7. I'm treating myself to it for christmas.

That sucks. My girlfriends computer totally crapped out after a de-fragmentation as well. I tend to stay away from doing it :p

Nooooo, don't get Vista, I made that mistake, unless you really want DX10, don't get Vista!

I you can find a copy of XP Pro I have my old key which I don't use anymore since I am on Vista, you may use it if you want.

We have it covered....I think.

Dude, vista is great. i don't know what your all smoking >:L

I know, it's like I'm doing something horribly right with my computer.

Move onto Vista. It was one of the best choices I ever made.
Don't give in to all the Vista haters.

HPDarkness1 wrote:Move onto Vista. It was one of the best choices I ever made.
Don't give in to all the Vista haters.

^^Agreed. I'm yet to try vista on a rig I make though.

So after 6 hours ive been messing with this issue solo cause ironically nothing is open today. Ive read alot and searched beyond my belief on whats going on and it's like as soon as it seems im in the clear a new problem presents itself.

The main issue of all this is a simple tick box under the hard drive properitys window called "compress harddrive" and not the defrag itself. When I clicked that (which I remember doing) it compressed all the files on the drive to assuming make things run faster for drive management. Sad thing is this also compresses your boot manager enabling it to not work correctly when botting your comp.

So I took out the drive from my main rig and installed it on this computer as a slave so I could explore it and save what content I wanted to. While I have saved my halo files and about 60 gigs of other things I unchecked that box on drive and tried to boot it again to see if that cured it.

Sadly it worked but didnt. This time I get a prompt saying that a file "hal.dll" is corrupt or missing. So again I took the drive out and put it in this comp and took the hal.dll file from this computer and placed it into my main one. I also took the time to repair the "boot.ini" file and tried to reboot my main rig again. Sadly nothing happened and I still got the "hal.dll" error. After doing more research on the error I found out it could be a whole list of things causing this error and not actually being the hal file being the problem. So I trouble shot each scenario with all of them leading me to a dead end.

So finally into hour 5 of all this I went into the closet and starting digging through boxes of software and driver disc's till I finally came upon my XP boot CD. Yes, I found the actual CD. So i pop that in hoping to do a repair, set my boot order in BIO's and guess what? Now im getting a error about a bad "biosinfo.inf" file. So I go reading again and found out the issue of this can be a anti-virus software issue on the computer thats installed stopping me from booting the CD. The cure to correct this from MS directly is to..

"Log on your computer, Go to Add/Remove programs and remove the program, then log off and begin the boot CD again"

I wish I could do that but if I try I get the "hal.dll" error. So again im stuck behind the 8-ball. Well then I had something strike me like irony in the face and could help but laugh out loud in a sea of computer parts on my floor.

As some may know and some don't ive been over at modhalo writing a few post on various topics and one main theme through out them is the fact of telling these newer people they need to evolve and start using Eschaton cause HMT is now old and outdated. I guess you can apply this to me cause I never wanted to leave XP and move on to Vista and have been spending all my Xmas day trying to fight that from happening. I guess you can say fate/karma is roundhouse kicking me in the face right now Chuck Norris style.

So I begin thinking of everything I have saved Vs. what im loosing and it isnt really that much to get back after all. Granted it's going to take some time but all things take time I suppose. So again I actually went back online and read some reviews on Vista itself on tech forums like HardForum to name one from people who actually work on/with these programs and a main stay to see what the general feel for it is and the main plight with Vista and most haters of it is that if you have a "weak" computer then your not going to enjoy Vista. If your computer is up to date hardware wise then Vista will be a wonderful experience it seems.

So im sitting here now with a clean harddrive and 2 options.

1. Install XP Pro on it and begin to reinstall everything backon a OS ive been using for years and know everything about.

2. Go but Vista tomarrow and finally evolve like ive been telling these kids over at ModHalo having to relearn everything once again and venture into the unknown.

So yeah, Im going to town tomorrow to buy Vista. I have a few side reasons to do this also being I can now get H2PC and GTA4 PC since they are for Vista only as well alot of game being in the market today. Im going for broke and buying Windows Vista Ultimate since I heard the home edition lacks alot and why not get the best I can from the get go then wishing I did later.

So to sum all this up I guess all the main files I was concerned about are safe on this computer now and my main rig is bookshelf until tomorrow morning. Thanks for all the support and feedback in this thread and while it has been directly about a tech issue thanks admins for keeping it here where the people I associate with would see it and know whats going on since it does effect the future/process of my mod.

Now someone needs to go to ModHalo and tell those kids...

"If Pepsi can loose his computer, get off XP finally and move on to Vista then you sure the hell enough can move from HMT to Eschaton"

..and link them to this thread. XP will always be one of the best OS's Ive ever used but heh, times are changing and I think this is fate kicking me in the butt telling me to move on along with it.

Thanks for the support guys and sorry Hamp I didn't get to upload my mod. Looks like I made you look like a ass anyways but paid for it dearly doing so.

If you buy Vista you won't have to re-learn everything. All the Halo PC modding tools work fine, every game I have works, and it's basically the same as XP.

People are just scared of it because Aero looks sharp.

Also, IMO your probably aren't going to use most of the things on Ultimate. I would go with Home Premium, that's what I started with. The only real reason I'm moving on to Ultimate is because my uncle has a 64bit copy, that he hasn't used.

Also the Ultimate extras aren't that great, you basically just get BitLocker, and a couple of Dreamscenes.

So unless you really want Ultimate, save some money and go with Home Premium.

Well, if for whatever reason, you really really really hate vista for whatever reason, if you buy ultimate, you can downgrade to xp free.

HPDarkness1 wrote:If you buy Vista you won't have to re-learn everything. All the Halo PC modding tools work fine, every game I have works, and it's basically the same as XP.

People are just scared of it because Aero looks sharp.

Also, IMO your probably aren't going to use most of the things on Ultimate. I would go with Home Premium, that's what I started with. The only real reason I'm moving on to Ultimate is because my uncle has a 64bit copy, that he hasn't used.

Also the Ultimate extras aren't that great, you basically just get BitLocker, and a couple of Dreamscenes.

So unless you really want Ultimate, save some money and go with Home Premium.

Does Ultimate move faster then Premium thoe? I never thought of that and yeah, the dream scenes look cool but I can do the same thing on XP with VLC or Winamp anyways. Might have to do some more research before morning.

Woe is me.

Pepsi wrote:

HPDarkness1 wrote:If you buy Vista you won't have to re-learn everything. All the Halo PC modding tools work fine, every game I have works, and it's basically the same as XP.

People are just scared of it because Aero looks sharp.

Also, IMO your probably aren't going to use most of the things on Ultimate. I would go with Home Premium, that's what I started with. The only real reason I'm moving on to Ultimate is because my uncle has a 64bit copy, that he hasn't used.

Also the Ultimate extras aren't that great, you basically just get BitLocker, and a couple of Dreamscenes.

So unless you really want Ultimate, save some money and go with Home Premium.

Does Ultimate move faster then Premium thoe? I never thought of that and yeah, the dream scenes look cool but I can do the same thing on XP with VLC or Winamp anyways. Might have to do some more research before morning.

Woe is me.

There's almost no difference between Premium and Ultimate other than more business features and security tools. In my opinion, its not worth the money to get Ultimate over Premium unless your running a small business, otherwise the added security features will just slow you down.

PEPSI! hold the phone! I know how to fix that hal.dll error thingy! Boot from your XP cd into recovery console mode then use the command propmt to copy the file over. And you should have a working XP computer again.