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!

[indo]

AMD +2600, Asus A7N8X-X (VIA 400), NVidia Geforce MX 420, with some Cheap High Latency Ram.

I was having similar problems. I have a machine that is Win2k SP4. Everything was working fine for a while. I upgraded to DirectX 9, then rebooted. I kept getting the blue screen "failed to initialize graphics driver."

I tried every solution I found including learning a great deal about the recovery console, which in my opinion is worthless junk.

All of my drivers are up to date, motherboard, graphics card, etc. I tried all the different safe modes of course. They all led me to the same annoying blue screen. (I was having Win98 flashbacks, seriously.)

1. Ran the auto-recover option from the setup CD. Replaced many system files with original from the CD. Didn't work. (Ended up screwing all my programs up though.)
2. Tried Emergency Boot CD (http://www.ebcd.pcministry.com/) to get the pictures off my disc before I formatted and reinstalled. EBCD wouldn't read my NTFS partition! So I decided to do what was necassary to boot my machine.
3. Started stripping my other PCs and switching out components. Graphics Card first, then the RAM. Nothing worked.
4. Reluctantly spent an hour learning the in's and out's of the Recovery Console. I started disabling services that I thought may have caused the graphic driver error. Nothing...
5. Came to this forum, read the suggestion about the Boot Virus Detection and mup.sys. So I disabled the Boot Virus Detection in the BIOS, restarted and got the blue screen again. I then went to the recovery console and disabled mup.sys which was listed as BOOT. Restarted, and presto... straight to Windows.

I am now reinstalling Win2k and all my programs. I still have no clue what caused this problem. If it involved DirectX, why did disabling mup.sys finally allow me to boot? Was it because of the Boot Virus Detection on my MB, and maybe Windows needed to boot up first and do some hocus pocus to the MBR? What the hell Microsoft, I hate you.

So if you are having a similar problem, I would suggest trying to disable the Boot Virus Detection and reboot a few times. If that doesn't work, go into the recovery console (or perhaps Safe Mode if you are lucky) and disable mup.sys before you start tearing the OS apart.

BTW - What the hell is mup.sys anyway? I couldn't find any reliable information on the file. Hope this helps some how.

This post has been edited by indo: Jul 22 2005, 07:45 AM