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!

Wow! http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1087979980

One thing you might not have tried is disconnecting your USB devices and cards, restarting, and then reinstalling their drivers. That was what a few websites I looked through suggested.

Haha, yes that was the first site I came across and boy was I saddened to see how little success people were having with it. I updated my USB drivers to no avail...



How might I go about fixing the registry on the other partition? Using the recovery console, scanregw /fix and scanreg /restore are unavailable.

It has also come to light that I don't have permissions to access quite a few of my directories on the other partition... so I couldn't just copy the data to this partition then do a clean install. (Clean installs have been reported not to work by a few people also :'( )

Thanks
Ryan

hmm...The suggestions here cover lots of possible solutions ranging from the hard disk being the culprit to outdated motherboard drivers: http://bink.nu/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4056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

And if all else fails...get a copy of Spinrite6 from Gibson research.

what the heck is that?

It looks to be some feature-rich data recovery software, it is priced a bit steeply for not having any documentation. I use GetDataBack for that purpose.

I have tried just about every suggestion I've read on every forum... short of purchasing new hardware. Right now I am copying all of the data to an extra hard drive that I attached.... the data that I have access to at least Hopefully I will be able to copy the protected files from the C: partition to the new G: drive if I log into C: using the recovery console... If that fails I will post back looking for other ideas for getting those protected files... Of course I have Admin privlages and passwords for each partition, but that doesn't seem to matter.

Thanks for posting that link Ali , I remember distinctly not clicking it when I got it from google because of the .nu extension... how foolish of me! It looked like the most comprehensive list of attempted and failed solutions, sadly none of them worked in my case.

~Ryan

You get the same qulity results for half the price:
http://programmersheaven.com/search/downlo...sp?FileID=28658

Have had this problem never found a solution only resolution to it was re-installing XP over the top of itself.

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

I had this problem today when I installed SP2 for XP. Boot would lock up, safe mode indicated it was locking up at MUP.SYS. I updated the MB BIOS (Asus P42800 mobo) and it booted fine.

Hope this helps.

You will not be able to post a reply to this message. For reference, here is the body of the message you tried to post:

I had the same problem with a machine with a ECS K7S5A-Pro. The machine ran fine once built, but after a few months it would not load WinXP and would reboot everytime after loading mup.sys. Having gone through numerrous threads I undertood that this is a motherboard problem where it cannot access/read/boot from certain Hard drives. To fix the problem I booted from WinXP disk (you can use floppy or cd rom) then choose repair option. Then use the fixboot option to fix the bootstrap (the command is similar to fixboot cant remember exactly). You can see the right command by typing help in the repair console. Once I fixed the bootstrap, the problem was fixed.

I too have the deplorable mup.sys prob. my question is, how many of you are running scsi raid or serial ata equipment, this is when i started developing the problem

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.

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.

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

From the Repair console I did a CHKDSK and now my problems are solved.

Kenn

I have a fix for the problem:

IF:
1) Locking up at MUP.sys in both normal boot and any safe mode boot.
2) Any attempt to read from the disk locks up the application that is attempting to read/modify etc.

Problem:
Corrupt sectors on the disk.

Solution:
1) Take the harddrive and add it to another bootable WinXP image.
2) Chkdisk should automatically run on the corrupted disk.
3) Chkdisk will delete and replace corrupted files and mark the sectors as bad.
4) Add the disk back to the original system.
5) Boot twice (The first time you boot it may give you some form of "No OS exists on this disk, the Bios will update the drive information after the first boot).

Your good to go.

I'm from Microsoft and I appologize for any inconvience this may have caused. Though ultimately this could be attributed to the disk, hopefully the robustness of the chkdisk process is some sort of consolation. Also I appologize for having to have another computer, personally I just got a big IDE cable and ran it to the orignal computers drive (as to not be forced to remove it).

Thanks again.
Chris.

Wow!!! So far I've seen everything on this MUP problem. Unfortunately, Chris, I tried what you suggested before you suggested it to no avail...other system, chkdsk, + defrag. Yes...corruption found, but here's what else I tried/discovered.

Replaced memory (you'll soon be able to tell I have access to MUCH hardware)
Replaced AGP video card w/ ATI
Default bios settings
Manipulated bios setting w/ no power management turned on
Removed PCI modem
Tried to boot from a different KNOWN GOOD XP drive...same problem
Formatted said drive KNOWN GOOD (Maxtor) and began installing OS...and here's the kicker:

Got a CRC error reading the OS files from the CD (known good CD)...install failed!

This sytem's 4 months old...unfortunately one of those buddie's system who thought he could build it himself & save...could we be looking at bad writes all initiated by a bad CD drive?

I'm going to try a few more things w/in the bios...haven't flashed it yet.

This wil be one for the books!

Blake

PS IDE drive w/Intel processor...rules out AMD & SATA

ha ha ha it's my turn restarted my PC, I got a BSOD right before the XP logo, after mup.sys, complaining about unknown hardware problems (as BSODs usually do!)

Turned it off, checked cables & slots. Turned on, same again ... choosed Last good config from start up menu & it's ok now.

These must be caused by registry bad entries since i found out that whenever i install a Windows Service which is made by myself in dotNet & hence has some bugs (), this happens on next boot. Sth really different from other's!

Didn't read all posts but it seems like that these are all irrelative to the file mup.sys. They are different problems showing up just after mup.sys is loaded which is the last file in the sequence.

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.

According to the Microsoft KB, it's the Multiple UNC Provider, which creates transparencies between different types of file servers in order for file paths with different naming conventions (e.g. //abc/abc) to be accessed.

I bet restoring the registry (by whatever means possible) is the solution. I don't remember how we do it in win2k. Tapping F8 at startup brings the startup menu up. If there is a "last good config" thing, then choose that.

Does win2k have ScanReg.exe? If so that's another option. I got Alzheimer

Blake, I don't want to sound disrespectfull, but what a load of crock!

My network servers run 15 000 rpm SCSI drives that'll make ANY SATA drive look slow by comparison (they can push out 320 MB per second - what can yer SATA do?) and Windows still ends up waiting for them.

The "problem" as you described it refers to hardware and has diddly-squat to do with the OS!

hey kids mup.sys is used for shared folders/driver
rename to mupisbad.sys kidding you can name the files mupwhatever.sys
reboot your system
go into the repair console and replace mupisbad.sys with mup.sys you can find it in SP4

I have been experiencing same problem for months now. The only workaround I found so far was using XP 64. It works fine and no problem at all. Every time I try to load XP, I get the balank screen. I tried ALL Drives.. SATA.. IDE.. SCSI Card SCSI disks...the fresh install works fine some times till I reboot. However, one thing I stress is for me, this problem started after I upgraded my processors from Opteron 250 to Opteron 275. So I thought IWill didn't have good support for this processor and was causing, eventhough I updated to their latest BIOS that clearly says supports 275. Below is my post from AMD fourms website. See if someone can help me, which I doubt would be successfull.

I have never seen this. My Dual Core Opteron 275 was working fine for few days. After I rebooted by computer, it won't load windows XP and I have a green light on monitor but nohting on the screen. After 15 minutes I recycled the power, it said"XP did not load normally, do you want to start Safe mode". I wanted to start in safe mode, then same thing once the OS Menu goes, does not load windows. I ran Setup thinking something wrong, and choose the option to Repair the installation after it detected the System FIles folder, it copied the installation files and when it came time to reboot to start Windows XP installation from windows mode. IT got stuck on the black screen again. No windows installation. I thought there might be problem with the systems files. So I started a Fresh install and even formatted the HDD, it formatted fine and copied files then when it came to load windows or run the windows part of setup it would stay in black screen. Here's all i tried:

Things tried so far to fix the system boot problem:
-Tried to reinstall operating system by formatting HDD
-Replaced Video Card with MSI 8x Graphics card
-Replaced HDD with ATA HDD and tried to install OS, but does not go past DOS installation screen. Also, tried installing SCSI card and SCSI disks.
-Replaced Memory with other Memory tried 1 Memory chip, and 2 diferent chips
- Reset BIOS from Jumper
- Removed the PCI NIC and removed changed Keyboard/Mouse/monitor/CD Drive
- Tried to install Windows 2003, still does not go past the dos screen.
- One Amazing thing is, When I had this problem on IDE drive. I removed the drive and hooked up to a different system as Primary drive and was able to boot to XP on that system. When I brought back to this system, same problem.

SO I tried to install XP - didn't work, so to make sure it is not the CD, i tried to install 2003 same problem.

My computer specs are:

Motherboard: IWill DK8N
Bios: lates V11
CPU: Dual Core Opteron 275 (single processor)
Mem: CorSair 2 GB CAS 2.0 2-3-2-6 3200
Video: ATI AIW x800 Pro (tried other card too from MSI)
All PCI Slots Empty.

The above configuration was working fine for few days, when I rebooted the problem started.

Your Help would be highly appreciated and Thanks in advance!

Can u try installing a copy of XP with built in SP2?

Hello all,

I have suffered with this problem like many of you have. In my case i am fortunate enough to have a copy of the original Windows XP disc, i.e. not even SP1. In order to fix this problem i took a roundabout way of doing it after trying many of the suggestions i have seen here and other sites.

I installed a second copy of XP onto the HDD, in a folder called WINDOWS2

Once i had done this, i was able to boot from the new copy and access all my files. In my case, i was really only interested in data recovery so i managed to burn all of the data i needed to CD, which took a while!

Upon completing this, i downloaded a piece of software called KillDisk (free version) and used this to completely wipe the HDD since the Windows reformat was not working.

I know this is a kind of long way of doing it but for those in a similar situation to me, i.e. no 2nd HDD to connect up and collect data and only being interested in data recovery, it works.

I have sympathy for anyone who has come across this problem, because it's a pain in the ass!

Ant

I posted this to another forum yesterday:

From what I have seen, this problem is almost always hardware>>XP SP2 related. For some it is something as simple as an IDE cable or dodgy USB device, card, or memory... but for others it is painfully frustrating.

We live in the unfortunate situation where Motherboard manufacturers can sell "XP compliant" motherboards, complete with a nice logo from Micro$oft... but bios updates are not kept up to date with processors that are "suitable" for that board/XP.... you can flash your bios but still no go.

After swapping memory, hard drives, graphics cards with the system stripped to bare bones, my XP SP2 installation still halted on the black XP screen during the 1st install reboot.

I used Bart PE to boot and used the file manager to turn on the /sos switch in boot.ini and could see that it was halting at.... mup.sys. I took the common advice of renaming/replacing this file, but no joy. After a *lot* of searching (five days), I finally found there *is* a critical update from Micro$oft for those with this problem.

The problem is described as: "systems running a BIOS without production support for Intel Pentium 4 and Intel Celeron D processors based on Prescott C-0 stepping can potentially hang on Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation."

I couldn't boot as I was halfway through a full install, so here is what I did. Again using Bart.PE - I renamed:

c\windows\system32\drivers\update.sys

*That* is the offending file, not mup.sys which is simply the last loaded driver.

After that I was able to complete installation, then install the critical update - you can find it here:

Critical Update for Windows XP (KB885626)

Its essential that you install this update *if this is your problem* - if you can boot into safe mode at least and there is a bios update for you, then try that first.

Thats it!

HTH

Matti Ressler
osCommerce Senior Team Member

Here's KB885626 one of the articles Matti talked about &
Here's the other one.
Thanx man.

How exactly do you do this? I can't find that option anywhere in the BIOS. I did a chkdsk in the recovery console and it says it found errors but how does it fix them? I'm using the commands listed here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314058 but my machine keeps restarting. If you can be more specific about how you finally loaded Windows, it would be awesome. I really need to recover some files and then I'll reinstall from scratch. Thanks in advance.

HP 7000 series, Windows XP (no sp2)
128 RAM, Pentium III
Bios: Phoenix
No recently installed hardware/software
Problem appeared after a power failure

Have a look at this to make sure u r using command Disable correctly & if u are already, why don't u try the last solution by Muffin? It sounds more reasonable.

lol this is halirious,
I have seen this problem before on PC's that I have worked on.

The first was a gateway that i actually removed SP2 off of because it disabled their cd-rw for some weird reason (windows for you). then i seen it when a client shut down their computer on a HP update (stalled on mup.sys)belive that i removed SP2 from that machine and it worked. now i am actually stuck. i have tried doing some of the bios stuff that i have read only to avail to nothing, also ran dskchk and fixmboot all that stuff.

I just recently installed a new USB 2.0 device on his computer and it has been working fine but then he calls me and says he ran come reg fix thing and had to chut down his computer right? Okay, sure he was probably a sucker for falling for that. anyways instead spending all this time troubleshooting i just decided to do a reinstall of windows. after the first setup it started the windows start up screen and then it wen in to disk check and said that one of the boot records was irreplacable (or destroyed). moving along here.....

So now im in the Windows XP set up screed with the bullets on the right side in right smack dab in the middle of it i get the blue screen of death. and says something that has to do with win2k.sys and that its something like a card or device. here it just poped up again here it is:

if this is the first time you have seen this stop error screen,restart your computer . If the screen appears again follow these step:

check to make sure and new hardware or software is properly installed if this is a new installation ask you hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.If problem continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options (did that) such as caching
damn it it want away anyways could use some help

also one more thing my mother board has a problem after it restarts it ways detecting IDE Driv es...and stay there . i know that it is an athlon processor, not sure about the mobo though it ws a ddr 400 chipset

Ok I have done everyting Muffin and Amir have suggested and still I can not get my system to boot past Mup.sys. Any other suggestions?

Format and install a SP1 XP or XP without SP. Install the Critical Update for Windows XP (KB885626 the first link), and then install Windows XP SP2.

what do u think u did to cause this? upgraded to SP2?

Well after a week of trying, calling in two favors from IT friends, the only solution that worked was to install a new harddrive and do a complete XP install on the new HD. My copy of XP installed SP2. I installed the fix first thing and the system is working fine now. It actually boots faster than before now.
Talking to my IT friends both of them have expiernced the MUP.sys failure before and neither of them have been able to find a solution, the fixes Amir and Muffin mentioned did not work for them either.

Chris,

Thanks! I spent about an hour trying stuff, then I tried a fixboot, chkdisk, rebooted and it all worked

You saved me a lot of time / hassle!

Regards

Simon

I understand this is an old topic, however none of what I've read helped me and this is also the first hit in Google.

I performed an Acronis Universal Restore from one machine to another, and upon booting, the new PC would reboot just before the Loading Windows XP screen and also when trying to boot into Safemode at mup.sys.

I was close to giving up, when I noticed that some sort of SiS driver was trying to load just before mup.sys when attempting safe mode.
So I put the drive into another machine, which it booted correctly into windows, then performed the following.

1) Open a command prompt from within Windows and type "SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1".
2) Then type devmgmt.msc to start up Device Manager.
3) Once in Device Manager, go to the View menu and choose Show Hidden Devices.

I then went through all the lists and uninstalled anything to do with SiS, along with any old drivers I thought were no longer applicable.

Please note removing the wrong thing could mess your system up even more so only experienced users should attempt this.

I hope this helps.

Matt