Stop error at system boot

Hi all,
Few days ago a stop error occurred with no warning or anything saying just:

***stop 0x0000005c (0x0000010b, 0x00000003, 0x00000000,0x00000000)

Then it was all fine for a day, and then i believe after installing a service pack or some updates, yesterday and today i get the same error and windows won't start.

I created the zip folder, but the one from perfmon doesn't want to be saved as html. Plus there is no minidump folder.

I have vista home premium x32.

Thanks a lot for any help and if there is anything else i should include please let me know.

The STOP 0x5C error is an issue with the initializing of HAL.DLL. HAL.DLL is the layer between your hardware and Windows - if it isn't working, the system won't work. More info on it here: BSOD Index

What USB devices are you using? There appears to be issues with a USB Flash Drive in your System EventLog files. There may also be issues with your wireless networking devices - what kind of device is it (USB or built in)? I presume that your system is an Acer Aspire 7520 (a laptop)?

Please check in C:\Windows for a file named MEMORY.DMP. If you find it, zip it up and upload it to a free file hosting service . I recommend Windows Live SkyDrive - http://skydrive.live.com or another free, file-hosting service. Then post the link to it in your topic so that we can download it.

Just to be safe, uninstall Daemon Tools and ensure that the sptd.sys driver isn't being loaded when Windows loads (if so, rename it to sptd.BAK - it's in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers directory). The reason for this is that this driver can cause BSOD's.

Hey usasma thanks for the reply a lot.

Yeah i know that my post has not been the greatest one, but first of all there is no MEMORY.DMP file.. i know that i should have included that.. but couldn't.. i even tried to make a setting i believe (but don't remember how) to create the .DMP file.. but it didn't create anything. And yes i'm using Aspire 7520.

Yeah actually i noticed that there is problem with one of USB ports since yesterday i tried connect a mouse.. and it was showing me error. This also showed while i run Windows in safe mode in the device manager some exclamation mark for this i believe. So i think the problem is in that.. and not anything else, if you have any idea on what to do about it, would be really helpful. Although i think i should uninstall and then install it from scratch or?

And yeah a funny thing happened, i actually turned on my pc back on from hibernate this morning.. it got stuck.. and after a while it loaded windows.. so that was unexpected.

Thanks again for the help and hopefully you'll see this post. Sorry for the late reply but nobody was replying till now.

I would see if you can get someone to look at repairing/disconnecting the broken USB port. Once that's dealt with, we can then see if there are any other problems that need looking at.

That would be great, thank you very much.