Windows XP crashing with message "missing or corrupt system32/hal.dll"

Welcome to the wonderful world of Bill Mafia and his treacherous connections with the DOD USA which allowed him to impose this horrible piece of crap as a world standard.

You can boot the PC with UBUNTU 9.10, retrieve the hal.dll file from the c:/windows directory and copy it to c:/windows/system32 directory! It works! Don't ask me why there are 2 copies of the same file!