[MacTUG] Bootcamp issue with large window xp hard drives partition

[Glenn Anderson]

Ran into the following problem today with two Intel iMac, Mac OS  
10.5.2 that is kind of strange.

Windows XP (SR2) would install fine under bootcamp, when the windows  
partition was 160 GB (or smaller). However, when ever we tried a  
windows partition size of 200 GB, windows would start the install,  
copy files, etc all the way to the first reboot stage. Upon reboot,  
one gets the error message that the hal.dll file was missing. I think  
the exact message was "Cannot Find \Windows\System32\hal.dll"

Why the drive partition size would matter, I could find an answer to.  
For the moment, the problem has been solved by just going with a 160  
GB Windows partition.
Now, I don't know if a partition size > 160 GB but less than 200 GB  
would work as we didn't try it (it is just to time consuming to wipe  
out the windows partition, create a new one using bootcamp, install  
windows (doing the full NTFS format) and installing windows).

Anyways,  if anyone comes across something to explain this, please let  
me know as right now it makes little sense as to why this is happening.

Thanks.