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_im_not_you_*]

I make no guarantees. Do you have an on board device, and a pci device that do the same thing? eg; onbord lan, and pci ethernet card? try removing the pci, i got lucky and just switched pci slots, obviously , even though i had onboard disabled, it was causing conflict. Im not saying it is lan, but i am saying it is a conflict with devices. perhaps irq's? I just finished installing my 128 meg agp video card, a couple of blue screens and a safe start, and it seems to be okay. a good place to start looking for conflicts is in the registry, which is where i first started seeing the problem. everything seems solid now.

[Guest_VIA/ECS_*]

I make no guarantees. Do you have an on board device, and a pci device that do the same thing? eg; onbord lan, and pci ethernet card? try removing the pci, i got lucky and just switched pci slots, obviously , even though i had onboard disabled, it was causing conflict. Im not saying it is lan, but i am saying it is a conflict with devices. perhaps irq's? I just finished installing my 128 meg agp video card, a couple of blue screens and a safe start, and it seems to be okay. a good place to start looking for conflicts is in the registry, which is where i first started seeing the problem. everything seems solid now.

I am just curious to how many of you own AMD processors paired with either VIA or ECS boards. On top of that how many of you have SATA/RAID drives? A machine I built about 3 weeks ago for a friend mysteriously died the other day. It *supposedly* freezes at MUP.sys However upon further investigation that is not the case. SATA drives are fast....too fast for windows. As people shut them down PROPERLY windows is still trying to write the PageFile and flush it out, well it just takes one shutdown in the middle of flushing out the registry for it to ruin the registry and not allow system files to boot.

The only fix is to update your RAID/SATA drivers as well as flash your MB with an update.

Particularly this affects VIA KT600 with the NorthBridge/Southbridge chipsets.

[Guest_Troy M (xenogrug21@hotmail.com)_*]

Ok, to all of you who have had this problem.. I have read about 5 different forum sites, relating to this problem.. and there is NO CLEAR fix for the problem.. as of yet.

Basically.. i have read it to do with USB drivers.. Master Boot Records of HD's..., BIOS.. old motherboard rivers.. and SP2.. but, from my experience.. I honestly think it can be a combination of many things.. not just the one issue..

Or.. has anyone been thinking power supply? Maybe the power supply isn't providing the adequate power requirments of the MB.. and therefore is failing when it goes to try to Boot.

Or maybe it's the MBR of the hd, like others said.. casuing my pc to black screen, before loading XP.

Many people have remarked that thier pc will reset itself... Well, mine in question will not restart. It just goes to black screen when i try to boot normally, and if i try safemode, the ol MUP.SYS file is the last one shown....

(For those of you who don't know.. this problem apparently has nothing really to do with MUP.SYS. It is the last file loaded, before the kernel will allocate resources to the OS..(XP/2000) MUP.SYS is a driver file for USB devices i believe)

....then, when i try to boot off the CD..., to load the recovery console.. i can't!!! because the windows XP SP2 cd i have, won't go past "setup is starting windows", and i never actually see an installation option.. (R for repair, Automated recoevery console, etc) and it just hangs there... untill i restart the puter. Has anyone tried swapping back to a SP1 cd, and booting off that? does it make a difference? I even tried a Win2000 Pro cd, and ssame problem.

So, in conclusion... i have swapped out all hardware, other than the power supply, the CPU and that is it.. I believe that when it stopps at Mup.sys.. that is just windows way of saying some hardware is kapuut. It's then a combination of the software and the hardware.. (Software initializing instructions.. and the hardware not able to perform them) This then causing the freeze when trying to get to re-install options.

Many people also talk about when they get new hardware.. well.. i pose the question.. Did you get a new case too? Maybe it's the actuall power switch.. that somehow might have something to do with it.. As any tech would know.. it's not always the most difficult thing that is the problem. And sometimes never just the one thing.

Just a thought to add to this overwhelmingly puzzling issue.

Troy M
IT Tech Support.

[Guest_KennV_*]

I don't know if anyone has solved this issue yet but I'm working on the same problem. I will work through the posts and suggestions here and let you know how it turns out.

What I can tell you though is that it is probably not a hardware problem as I can boot into Linux without issue.

Kenn