Hard drives not detected, Windows XP fails to Boot HAL.dll Missing?

I've run into this problem on several occions. If you have done any repair work to your motherboards processor you may have an excess amount of heat sink thermal past or you may not have the heat sink seated properly, check them both. Another problem is if your copy of windows is oem. They are notorious for bad installs. Get a retail version of windows, boot from the cd and you should be good. The file you are not loading is called the hardware abstract layer.dll file which loads the GUI, or basically the windows screen that you see to operate the system.