[MrWookie]

HAL is the Hardware Abstraction Layer. It's the thing Windows uses to keep software running on it from directly addressing the hardware of your computer, instead having to go through HAL. The idea is that it tries to prevent poorly written code from hard-locking your system. If that's corrupted, though, there's basically no way to get anything in Windows, or Windows itself, to talk to your hardware.

The most likely explanation is that your install of Windows has gone bad. I'd first just try reinstalling without reformatting. You may lose some of your Windows settings and the like, and you'll probably have to reinstall your programs, but you shouldn't lose important data. If that doesn't work, then you're in worse shape. You'll have to try reformatting, and it may be that the hard drive itself has gone bad. If possible, I'd try plugging the drive into a working computer and seeing if you can access the directories on it. If you can, good. Pull off the data you need, put it back in your parent's comp, format and reinstall Windows. If not, it's time for a new hard drive, and short of paying some service that specializes in retrieving data from BUSTO hard drives (I'd expect $50-$100 to do this, and it probably would work for you), all the data on it is gone.