Hello, folks; I'm new here and hope somebody can help me out. I am NOT an expert at this, so keep it simple, ok? Here's the scoop: (Acer was NO HELP whatsoever and I'll NEVER buy their crap again):
It is an Acer Travelmate 2312LCi-L

Earlier, I was able to get into the PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility and set it to accept boot instructions from a floppy. From my other computers running XP, I copied to a floppy diskette these 4 files:
boot.ini (in one other machine I could find no such file, in the other I found ???boot.ini.backup??? so renamed that one boot.ini)
ntldr
Ntdetect.xom
HAL.DLL (version 5.1.2600.5512)
I plugged that diskette into the lappy via external floppy drive into a USB port.

I had copied hal.dll into C:\Windows already, and have updated IE to version 8 for XP.
I've also copied hal.dll into C:\windows\system32
Earlier, also, I had, at the Command Prompt, done ???chkdsk???

Now when I boot up, I get:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupted:
System32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file"

I press F8 and get the light-blue ???ACER??? window fills the screen, with, at the bottom:
press F2 for setup or press F12 for multi-boot selection
so I choose F12 and select ???Floppy Devices???
and it boots.

BUT it will not boot without that floppy. Unfortunately, the store where I got it did not provide a Windows XP CD.