Windows XP Professional won't start on my old Dell 8600 Inspiron laptop, due to a corrupted Windows/system32/hal.dll file. I'm trying to repair using the Windows XP Installation disk, but it asks for my Administrative Password. I thought I knew it, but my guesses keep failing.

How can I get around an unknown Administrator password?

Not sure of way around PW but as far as the hal.dll, a repair install will be the answer there

Repair install requires the Admin password. I don't think I ever had a Windows password -- the only password protection I ever installed was on my user account.

Did you try to use your user account pw

How are you running the repair install?
Perform a Repair Installation

Did you try to use your user account pw?
Yes, I hit Enter as if no pw and tried two other pw possibilities. All failed, then I repeated process several times, using different variations of the 2 pwords.

If I hit F2 upon startup, I can enter Setup (not Windows Setup), where I can change user pwords, including Admin pw, but Recovery Console doesn't accept it as the correct pw. Is the Windows pw separate from the user pw, or does one automatically = the other?

Two days ago, hitting F8 at startup (I think -- to enter Safe Mode), I got into c:\windows, with DOS commands available, without furnishing a pw. I tried to copy the hal.dll file (obtained from another computer running Vista) from a thumbdrive to c:\windows\system32\hal.dll, but didn't know the correct command format or the correct pathname. Since then, I get a "NTDLR is missing" upon hitting F8, and the same error upon entering Diagnostics, so that approach seems to be a dead end unless I can correct the NTDLR error. Computer really won't let me do much of anything.

How are you running the repair install?
Before seeing your instructions, I was hitting "R" to enter the Recovery Console, which asked for the Admin pw I don't have.

Now, avoiding "R" and the Recovery Console, when I reach Step 5 of your instructions, I must select from 4 possibilities in the box:
[LIST]
-: Partition 1 [FAT] 47 MB (39 MB free)
C: Partition2 [NTFS] 53592 MB (27952 MB free)
E: Partition3 [FAT32] 3585MB (1317 MB free)
Unpartitioned space 8 MB
/LIST]

I assume I select "C:", correct? Or what?

Will this allow me to repair Windows without destroying files on the computer?

Another question: if this fails, are files on my hard drive still recoverable?

Thanks for your advice.

Choose
C: Partition2 [NTFS] 53592 MB (27952 MB free)

A Repair Install will replace the system files with the files on the XP CD used for the Repair Install. It will leave your applications and settings intact, but Windows updates will need to be reapplied.

And with the NTDLR , a repair is also needed, so this should correct both issues