Mup.sys, Cannot boot to xp... Options

[snapplehooligan]

I have run out of ideas on this one... The situation is this: Booting into XP, before you get to the logon screen, the machine turns itself off. Starting in safe mode, it gets to Mup.sys then turns itself off.

I have the hard drive partitioned: the problem is occuring on a 50 Gb NTFS WinXP Pro partition(C:) - I am currently working from the other, 10 Gb NTFS Win2k Pro partition(D:). I have access to all of the files on the broken partition(C:). The machine has 128 Mb rdram pc800. Intel Pentium 4 @ 1.3 Ghz. It's a Dell Dimension 8100.

After googling the problem several times, I have tried the following suggestions that have all failed:

+Updated my BIOS to the most resent version
+Replaced the Mup.sys with a known-to-be-good uncorrupted copy
+Swapped my memory sticks
+Booted using the install disk and gone to the recovery console and entered "Disable Mup" also "Disable Mup.sys" - this generates an error about registry problems

There seems to be a lot of talk about this, but none of the forums I have read offers a difinitive solution. I have not installed any new hardware recently.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated... I have hit a wall, and I have work that I need to be doing

Thanks in advance to anyone who tries to help!

[usr.c]

hmm...The suggestions here cover lots of possible solutions ranging from the hard disk being the culprit to outdated motherboard drivers: http://bink.nu/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4056

What you can try to do to fix the registry is boot from the Windows XP startup disks (the 6 disk download from Microsoft) and go through the setup process. I can't remember, but I think it does a scan of both the file system and registry before setup.