http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26672
--- Comment #6 from Rafał Mużyło galtgendo@o2.pl 2011-04-21 18:15:49 CDT --- (In reply to comment #5)
Yep, turns out HAL isn't even installed, though libhal is.
It being installed is just half of the way - hald needs to be running and it runs as a specialized privileged user.
As I said, rarely anything recent needs it anymore, so distros tend to purge it.