Thanks Bill

Ok... this makes sense to someone (probably in another universe).

Yesterday I was working along on my nearly new PC. It started acting sluggish, so I rebooted.

OOOPssss.. Cannot reboot - system files are corrupted, use recovery disks. (How about booting in Safe Mode, you ask? Noooooo, not there either.)

Recovery disks are inserted. Cannot read recovery disks... need file on the recovery disk, but we cannot get the information off the disk - cause it can't be read.

Go to MS Repair Console.

Do all of that... should work. Nope.

hal.dll is corrupted or missing. Hit Google and find out that there is no repair for this error. NONE. MS says there is, but no one has ever gotten it to work. Ever.

So, MS documents a fix that they even admit wont work.

I love my G5 even more these days.

Argh.....