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!

[Guest_Ian Wrigley_*]

Hi there. I am a PC Tech and have come accross this several times.
The main cause of this, is BIOS level virus protection. Mostly Trend Chipguard. What this does, is prevent changes being made to the MBR (Master Boot Record)
To stop this from happening, you will need to go into your BIOS and turn off bios protection. (Or simply restore defaults. This feature is NOT turned on by default, for a very good reason.)
It can also be caused when upgrading if you have multiple UNC protocols installed, for example Client for Novell Networks.
If this is the case, booting to the recovery console and typing disable MUP will work. If caused by bios virus guard however, this will do nothing. An update writes to the MBR saying do this before you next restart, but if this sector is protected, this can not happen - therefore, stall.

Hope this helps