I am having problems booting my laptop. Normally for my desktop I'd just pop in the CD and boot from disk, but with this computer it isn't that simple.

My computer: Sony Vaio VGN-x505ZP
My OS: Windows XP Pro
The Problem: When I restarted my computer at one point (after trying to clean off some spyware) it told me a file was missing or corrupt: <windows root>system32\hal.dll

I think it ended up in the recycle bin by accident, but it hasn't been totally deleted.

The Twist: The computer does not have an optical drive - no CD rom, or DVD - and no floppy disk. It does have two USB ports, a 4 pin firewire port, a cardbus slot, and I can connect an ethernet cord to it. But I don't have the CD drive to boot it from disk.

So.

Now, at one point I got to the command prompt and pressed F2 and changed some settings (I thought it would help) so that it would boot up from a different place.

And now the computer will start and says:

Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.1.08
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Operating System not found

Arg! So now, if I hit just about any key, the computer shuts down, and restarts - I can't type anything or get to the startup settings options with F2.

I can however plug in my ethernet cable , and when I do that i get:

Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.1.08
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation

CLIENT MAC ADDR:08 00 46 EA 02 6C GUID: 095780A0 4B66 11C6 8BBB080046EA026C
PXE-E53: No boot filename received

PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Operating System not found

Arg again!

So I have no idea where to go from from here, any help at all would be appreciated!!