XP reboot loop. Safe mode hangs at \Drivers\Mup.sys 1

[superjet]

Hello,
I have a box with Win XP pro that has taken a nasty reboot loop habit.
When you start it, SOMETIMES it boots directly to the BIOS and it forgets the CPU/PCI frequency. (Error reads: During the last boot-up, your system hung for an improper CPU speed setting. Your system is now working in Safe Mode. To optimize the system performance and reliability, make sure the CPU speed confirms to the specifications of your CPU.) I reset it to 133/33.

After that, it will boot to the XP Splash screen with the scroll bar at the bottom. Then the screen goes black and the Blue Screen of Death pops up for a millisecond and the machine reboots.
It will go through POST, then a screen comes up “apologizing for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully” and gives me safe mode choices.
If I boot to safe mode, the machine gets to \Windows\System32\drivers\mup.sys and reboots.
I have replaced memory, taken out all of the PCI cards, replaced the Video Card, tried different keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Any ideas? My ears are open!

AMD 1900+ 1.6Ghz CPU
Asus A7N266C motherboard
512 Mb memory (2x256 Mb tried in different slots in different configurations)

Thanks for looking,
Jamie

 

[Tezzie]

Your registry is corrupt.

I have seen this many times and in all cases only a reinstall has cured it. Even perfectly good PCs have fallen for no obvious reason.

I have also tried the recovery console and rebuilding the hive files, but its all a waste of time. Tez

Backups are great but checking if you can restore is more fun.

 

[Beer4meok]

Can you take out the battery on your motherboard or do you have a switch that you can turn it off?

Take the battery out for at least a one minute or turn the switch off for the same amount of time.

This will clear your bios and reset everything back to default.

Then try to boot again. Please let us know if the advice we give is of some help.
Feedback will benefit all
Dave

 

[Tezzie]

Pressing the INS key when starting the PC will also clear the BIOS

I doubt this will cure it - but im willing to be amazed Tez

Backups are great but checking if you can restore is more fun.

 

[superjet]

Thanks for the quick replies.
I tried removing the battery and swinging the jumper for a few seconds as Asus recomends this AM. I just tried it again for 2 minutes and it still did not work.
My fear is I re-install the OS and it will still do the same thing. I have read other fourms where people have had the exact same problem and re-loaded the OS and it still happens. Only then do they find out it was hardware related.

Do you think flashing the BIOS should be the next step?

Thanks again, Jamie

 

[Beer4meok]

I think reinstalling XP at this point would be the safest bet.

If something screws up when you flash the BIOS you will never get it back.

Take out everything you don't need right away to do the reinstall.

Reinstall and then do the upgrades,Then if you still have the problem it can only be Motherboard,hard drive,memory stick or CD-rom

Then install what you took out one by one and see if there is a conflict.

Good luck

Please let us know if the advice we give is of some help.
Feedback will benefit all
Dave

 

[allteltec]

I had the exact same trouble after replaceing a bad SCSI HD and upgradeing the SCSI controler to a 160mb, I had loaded the new drive with a good Ghost backup. It would boot up in safe mode but if you tryed to boot normal it would boot to \Windows\System32\drivers\mup.sys pause about 8-10 then reboot. I found the trouble to be i needed Drivers for the new SCSI controler, I down loaded and installed the new drivers and all was will.
Are you loaded ide 100 or 133 drivers for you HD, you drivers could be bad or need up dated.

 

[superjet]

Well, thanks for all of your suggestions, but I ended up just reloading the Winnt/Windows files.
It is ugly, but it worked.
I really appreciate the quick responses and the great ideas.

Jamie

 

[AMDAdam]

I ahve the same problem. I have a MSI K7N2G motherboard, AMD Athlon 2100 and an 80 G hard drive. It has been running fine till yesterday.
When I booted it said Windows didn't start successfully and I had a choice but Safe Mode, Last good setting, and Normal. On safe mode, it would show all this code then stop at windows/system/drivers/mup.sys. So then I clicked on Normal and the screen went blank, but my hard drive LED was on solid for two minutes. Then Boom, into Windows. I defraged my hard drive, ran scandisk, used msconfig to shutdown all other things and nothing has help. I used system restore to go back, but it never helped.
Today I re-installed Windows XP using the repair feature so it wouldn't delete my files. It didn't work.
It takes so long to boot now. It sucks, but I am happy it stil works.
I would really appreciate any ideas,
Thanks,
Adam

 

[tommyR]

Same problem here.
Computer was only built two weeks ago and it now fails to load up win xp home. On safe mode it stalls at mup.sys and does not even attempt to reboot.
I have tried loading the OS from a legit copy of winxp but
there is even an error with that.
Have tried removing all things from the mainboard and have cleared the CMOS memory and still the same issue.

I would like to reinstall winxp but I don't know how to go about that from ms dos....

 

[bcastner]

If it stalls at mup.sys and either locks, restarts or blue screens it is a hardware issue with the PCI/IDE buss. The hardware issue can be because of a bad driver. It also can be because of poor IRQ steering. And it can also be because of a card asserting or the slot being set in Bios to bus mastering and it is neither compliant or unable to provide the service.

This can be a bear to resolve. If the system has been stable for several weeks or longer (no hardware changes for a long period of time) then remove from the system everything non-essential from the PCI buss (noting its slot). Remove and reseat all RAM. Turn the machine on and hope it boots through clean. Turn it off. Put 1 PCI device back in, using a different slot. Turn it on. If okay, go and add a second PCI device in a differnt slot. Turn it on. Repeat.

If a device when added causes the mup.sys problem again (btw, it is not really mup.sys at fault, it just shows last on the screen) then see if you can find new drivers for it. If you cannot, toss it in the wastebasket and purchase a new one, though perhaps a different brand.

Most likely suspects are sound boards, lan adapters and video cards.

 

[linney]

tommyR,

HOW TO: Start Setup from MS-DOS in Windows XP (Q307848)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q307/8/48.asp

AMDAdam,

Download the free BootVis.exe Tool from Microsoft and improve your bootup times.

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/BootVis.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp

 

[AMDAdam]

Thanks Linney,
I will download BootVis. I am lucky that my system is able to boot into Normal Windows, it just takes 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Once in Windows I updated all my drivers. Since I re installed windows I had to download all the Windows Updates. That all worked fine.
I only have the problem when I boot up, so I decided not to shut down. I just do what I do with my Laptop, put it in to Hibernate. It works fine. Hibernate is cool because it takes no power at all and boot really fast.
When I use standby my fans still spin, but not with Hibernate.
I will try BootVis, I hope it works.

Thanks for your Help,
Adam

MSI MSI K7N2G motherboard, with GeForce 4 128 MB DDR, 5.1 Dobly Digital, Ethernet, USB 2.0, and Firewire and much more.
AMD Athlon 2100
512 MB DDR
80 GB

 

[tommyR]

My personal solution to this dilemma of unable to load winxp and finding safe mode hanging at mup.sys
It was bad ram.
A fresh strip of 512 solved the problem 100%

I have heard other solutions to this include usb2, lan cards and vid cards but for myself it was the ram.

 

[AMDAdam]

How do you use BootVis? I downloaded it a started it up, but I don't know what to do. There is no help file. I didn't want to try because I didn't want to screw things up.

Thank You,
Adam

 

[Beer4meok]

Open bootvis go to, trace/optimize system.
Let it run.
Be patient it may take 5 min or more the first time

Please let us know if the advice we give is of some help.
Feedback will benefit all
Dave

 

[ladato]

Continuing this thread because it's bitten me twice.

Friend's PC (an eMachines - don't even start!) with WinXP home is in the endless boot loop. The first time it happened, I installed XP to a different directory and pulled the data I needed.

This time (about 3 months later), I used a Knoppix CD (which I recommend highly as a recovery tool) to get the data and maybe even poke around.

After reading the information here (especially bcaster's info - thanks!), I started swapping things out. I have an exact-match machine here so I finally just put the bad machine's HD into the good machine. Still got mup.sys. Same error.

That tells me that it has nothing to do with the hardware *at this time*. Now, if a bad card caused a file to corrupt, and now I'm screwed, that's something else. But I'm trying to figure out how to get out of the here-and-now without a full OS reload.

My next step is to do a (R)epair installation and see where it gets me. But I wanted to jump in for those who might have the same situation as me.



Leon Adato (adatole@yahoo.com)
Measure what is measurable,
And make measurable what is not so.
- Galileo

 

[bcastner]

The tricky thing is that onboard devices can be the source of the problem. One common problem is that the onboard device has no capability of being disabled by either a BIOS setting or a jumper on the motherboard. The temptation is to uninstall the onboard device in Device Manager.

What you want to do in is case is disable the device in device manager. You may have to go back into Safe mode and re-install the original drivers for the device. Then reboot into safe mode and disable it, not uninstall it. My sons HP computer with an ASUS-AME HP-OEM motherboard drove me nearly crazy with MUP.SYS on startup until I took this approach with a add-on PCI graphics board.

 

[ladato]

Thanks for the info.

My challenge is that I can't get into the PC in safe mode or any other mode at this point. Under safe mode, I get to the mup.sys message while loading and then the machine recycles power and reboots again.

And once I see the error (as described here), I can't then disable the offending device.

For those who want to blame the eMachine's power supply (I saw that in some other areas), it's a 250watt, and the only things in the box are the motherboard, CPU fan, modem (which I pulled as part of the test), HD, floppy, CD and CD-RW. I don't think those components would overload a 250 watt supply.

Thanks again!

Leon Adato (adatole@yahoo.com)
Measure what is measurable,
And make measurable what is not so.
- Galileo

 

[bcastner]

Mr. Adato,

I believe you are going to have to do a maintenance re-install of Windows.

If it is any consolation this is not as big a deal as it sounds. You will not lose any of your settings or data. You will lose any Windows Update enhancements. But at least you can boot into Windows and figure out what was going wrong.

You would boot from the XP CD, ignore the request to run the recovery console, select upgrade, it will find the existing installation and ask if you want to repair it. You hit R, and select the existing installation.