A few months ago I purchased a maxtor 300gb SATA drive from Compusa.
I used the onboard SATA controller on my mobo to run it. After finally getting the driver and bios to pick it up it worked fine under XP Home. When I tried to get it to work in dual boot mode xp pro, it said hal.dll is missing or damage. I checked the location of it and it was where it was suppose to be. I decided to disconnect that drive (since I had 3 already up and running) and look for an SATA controller at my nearest Compusa..unfortuntily none was avalible So not until i went to NYC last week where I found a COMPUSA SATA controller.
I installed it last night when I got back from NYC loaded the drivers and it worked fine under XPHome..but same problem under XP Pro.. that Hal.dll problem.

Any suggestions please?

Hmmm, interesting, I just posted a problem I have been having with my Maxtor in the "Hardrive" section of this forum earlier today. It sounds like my issue is very similar to your issue. I am getting the same hal.dll error and I am also using WinXP pro. Here is my message from earlier today with the link.

"I am beginning to believe that there are some Sata related Maxtor issues that some of us seem to be experiencing.

I am running a Soyo P4vte motherboard with a Celeron D340 cpu. My MB does not have onboard video and I am running a Sapphire Radeon 9600 pro video card. This MB and video combination was rock solid stable just prior to my replacing the old harddrive (WD 60GB ATA 100) with my new Maxtor 200GB Sata 150 (6L200SO). The reason I replaced the harddrive was so I could use it to build a computer for my sister. I replaced the WesternDigital with the Maxtor and have had nothing but troubles ever since. My problem, I can load windows XP, load software, download software but after approximately half a day to a day my system begins to crash. It always starts with errors when I try to launch a file and than the system inevitably reboots. Once the computer reboots, it comes up with the error "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <Windows Root> system32hal.dll. I have reloaded windows and my files on my computer about 4 times in the last couple of days and each time it eventually crashes. I have tried using SP1a, SP2, windows drivers, MB drivers, etc. etc. Nothing seems to work. Like I said, nothing has changed in my system with the exception of the Harddrive. And with the old Harddrive I never had 1 crash or software corruption. I have the latest firmware version in the harddrive and I can't believe that the problem is anything but this new Maxtor."

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/har [...] 70108.html

If you remember you had to install drivers to get your OS to see the sata drive. They are not like IDE where you can plug and play they need drivers what I would do is locate the cd that came with your mother borad and install the pata sata drivers pata and sata are the samething on the cd they might be called pata. Just make sure you install the drivers and it should all work out find Maxtor HD are known for having problems but install the drivers see where that takes you.

Shadowspank, that's what is driving me nuts with this HD. Like you mentioned, I had to install the Sata drivers (hitting F6) as windows was installing which I did each time. Got windows installed, did the updates, as usual windows reboots many times during this process. No problems encountered. Once my other software is installed (Zonealarm, , other misc) the computer is very stable and runs fine for a few hours. Than for no reason whatsoever I begin to get error windows when I try to launch programs or they pop up while surfing (java, flash errors?). From this point my computer usually involuntarily reboots but gets as far as the mentioned error Hal.dll corrupt. There are no viruses on the computer and all of the other components ran rock solid stable with my old hard drive. ???

all drivers for both maxtor(maxblast4) and the SATA drivers are up and running. Wierd thing is that xp home has a wierd *pause* for several seconds before giving me control after its loaded all drivers. I can't see any solutions from Maxtor on this problem forxp pro

I was considering buying a Sata controller and bypass my onboard controller but by the sounds of it this didn't solve the problem for you. After reading a few messages in different forums regarding Maxtor SATA (and other manufacturer) issues I am beginning to wish I had gone with the ATA version instead. Too bad, it's a fast hardrive for the few hours that it works. I am going to call Maxtor support and bug them again. You might want to try the same if you haven't already. BTW, there is a firmware update that supposedly fixes some issues you might want to make sure that yours is the latest. Mine already is so the update is of no help to me.

yes I thought it was originally that the drive did not like the onboard mobo controller for the sata.. finally getting a hold of this card (just wierd no computer store in my area carries SATA cards anymore ) i thought it would fix everything. I mean it does work, just not under xp pro

Its nice to finally have an internal drive with smaller, easier connectors, but like you said I should have gone with the ata drive as a few weeks later the price of the ata drive dropped to the same price i paid for this sata one (150)

Hello,

Some people experience with any sata hard drive drive a delayed load time when windows start up.

1) The computer boots and then beeps the first time.

2) Then it hangs for 1-2 minutes.

3) Windows then loads up fine and nothing wrong thereafter.

So far people say disable this and PIO issue.

Sorry guys I wish I could be of more help. As I am located in California and its hard to support everything from a texted based site.

I got my 1st sata drive 10,000 rpm wd raptor and I was ready to toss it out the window I was so pissed that my os would not see the drive. Then i found out about the drivers problem. Look around the microsoft site for patchs and the mother borad site to see if they have new drivers. Remember that XP was made way before sata and big drives came out. With that in mind good luck.

ahhh this sucks.. still MS should have a patch for it or Maxtor should be able to help with this as its there product Maybe windows vista will have full support.

Out of dozens of computers with 1 or more SATA drives I've built over the past couple years for people, I've never had a problem with drivers/SATA drives. The missing/damaged hal.dll message sounds more like the HDD priority got changed with the addition of the new drive. XP isn't going to give you that message for hooking up a new drive. Unless when you hooked it up it got moved to the top of the list in the HDD boot priority in BIOS. So obviously if it's trying to boot off this new drive and nothing is on it (or more importantly no OS), you're going to get missing/damaged hal.dll. So I would first look in BIOS and make sure I have the appropriate settings correct.

Also, with SP2 I do believe XP will detect SATA drives automatically.

hey thanks for the input...

unfortunitly thats not the case with me. C drive contains XP home, D drive Contains XP Pro, E Drive is for other stuff(like work stuff) , F is the DVD burner. Those four take fill up all IDE spots on my mobo. Dispite hooking up the SATA to the internal connectors on the mobo AND even buying a PCI sata controller, I still have the same problem under XP Pro...home works fine and picks it up after i installed the drivers.. I have installed the drivers under pro while its disconnected , shutdown, reconnected that sata drive and started up again, but get that hal.dll error and have to reboot...again, xp home works fine, its XP pro that doesn't like it

and I haven't changed the boot priority .