Thankyou for your reply,
I did choose within the options menue to have hal start like a normal program from the start menue and not when windows boots. Then I disabled it from startup with msconfig. Still it gives me the error when I boot, seems to recheck itself within the msconfig interface. So I just, rather than get all frustrated, allowed it to load when I boot up. No big deal. It is something simple. If that is the only problem I encounter, and thus far it is, then I am pleased.
TM