* I would like to remind all of our fellow part-time "computer doctors" to ALWAYS unplug your PC from the wall before pulling out any components from the motherboard. This is not only for the health of your computer components but also to prevent you from electrocution.

Since leaky capacitors were brought up, may I cite my experience with this.

A. With a motherboard with leaking capacitors:
System: Assembled PC circa 1999 windows 98 system Duron 600,64 mb ram 15 gig hard disk
1. PC would freeze at random points: during boot up, within windows, while typing.
2. Sometimes PC would work fine but after anywhere from 1 to 3 hours would freeze at random. Subsequent reboots also would freeze up at random.
3. I changed CPU fan, Power supply, video card, removed and used different IDE cables one item at a time (to isolate what component was busted. No resolution to the problem.
4. downloaded memtest... PC froze midway through the test. Bought new ram, removed old ram and installed new ram... still froze.
5. Went online with another PC and Googled my motherboard: found out about leaky capacitors affecting that model.
6. Opened the Casing and pulled out all the cards and cables... found 2 capacitors bulging and with rust like leaks.

Opted to buy a new motherboard (ASUS) and while at it also bought a new CPU and new ram (old ram is no longer supported by new motherboards. Why ASUS motherboard? I still have a Pentium 133 which I bought back in 1996 and the PC is still alive and ticking.

Conclusions:
1. Memtest may freeze up if leaky capacitors are present.
2. Spare parts are needed to rule out defective parts as you test them one at a time.


B. Windows freezes at Mup.sys on Safe Mode
First of all if you installed a new hardware component and Windoze froze at the black windows startup splash screen and also after displaying mup.sys on Safe Mode boot up, you could try removing the component( see * above) and then rebooting the PC sans the new hardware. Hopefully the PC should boot up fine, and the only problem would be either incompatibility or that power supply can not meet the additional demand by the new hardware.

My experience was that my folks woke me up with the statement, "The PC was destroyed." The PC upon examination would freeze on the proverbial black screen of death (frozen at windows XP splash screen). On Safe Mode would freeze after displaying Mup.sys

System: Celeron 1.7 ,motherboard with built in video audio and lan, 256 mb ram, DVD rom, 40 gig hard disk. A very basic desktop but hey, it came free when we purchased the Corolla back in 2003.

I tried all the fixes mentioned in the websites:
1. windows recovery mode (booting windows CD then selecting the R option)
2. testing cables one by one by replacing with spare cables
3. disabled USB function in BIOS
4. Minimal set up: Mobo, ram, video card, mouse, keyboard: got 1 beep at boot up (meaning these components are all okay). Added the hard disk: froze at mup.sys
5. --NOT RECOMMENDED: Searched the web and landed in a website like this wherein someone suggested booting the windows CD to the recovery mode and performing a 'repair MBR' which supposedly fixed his problem with the freeze up at mup.sys--- DO NOT DO THIS!!! In my case after doing that, the hard disk would not boot up and thus I was forced to format the hard disk.
Good thing I had presence of mind to pull out the hard disk and using an external usb2 enclosure copied all important folders to my laptop.

Anyway I had no other option than to format the hard disk and reinstall Windows XP as #5 literally killed any hopes of avoiding the format procedure.

Result of format and reinstalling XP: no more problems, windows worked fine.

But happiness was short-lived. After 2 days, the PC would freeze at Black Screen of Death. Seeing the Black screen with a very faint picture of the windows splash screen (Normally when you boot up the black Windows XP splash screen stays dim for about 2-3 seconds then it becomes bright). I hit the reset button and did a safe mode boot up. which froze at mup.sys. I was left thinking it might be the video card (no real logic for this presumption since I based it on the black splash screen frozen while it was still dim) or power supply .

Luckily I still had the old 6 year old power supply that came from the Duron that I had repaired recently.

I pulled out 2 year old power supply and attached the 6 yr old powersupply (not recommended to use old equipment as they may die out anytime hahaha). Anyway, bootup was uneventful and PC works. Its been 3 months since the time I inserted the new powersupply and the PC has had no recurrences.

Conclusions:
1. Old parts may still be useful not only for diagnostic purposes
2. the fix MBR option is NOT a good option
3. A dying power supply has different ways of croaking
4. I could have saved myself all the trouble if I replaced the power supply unit before trying anything.
5. No single solution to this mup.sys problem

So should anyone ask me what to do about the mup.sys problem, I would suggest the following in this order:
1. prior to touching anything inside the case, shut off and unplug the computer (of course plug the computer before testing it )
2. remove any newly installed hardware --if PC works fine I would suspect either compatibility issue or that the added hardware's power load can no longer be supported by the existing power supply
3. Test the cables, cards, memory, and drives. Testing cables may be diagnostic and curative of loose connections. The same goes for reseating cards.
4. test the powersupply unit *PSU) by using a spare PSU --Although a faulty power supply often has more obvious signs (starburst boot up screen, CD rom refuses to eject a CD, PC reboots randomly, computer seems to emit a intermittent hum with matching intermittent vibration of the PC case ) it was the culprit in my bout vs. the mup.sys freeze despite the fact that it did not show any of the aforementioned signs.


Epilogue: I opened up the faulty power supply unit and pulled out the 80 mm fan and hot wired it to a free red and black cable from the power supply. Now it serves as one of the cooling fans within the case.

al

Update since my last post on Aug 17. Changed my video card, added a new SATA HDD, changed my power supply with no luck, Picked up a new motherboard yesterday and that seemed to help. Things back and working now.

The TIM (Thermal Interface) in the old assembly was pretty messed up - so I suppose in some ways that could be a culprit (freezing/ lock up). Picked up a tube or ArcticSilver5 and system for now seems running pretty cool. Physical inspection of old mobo shows nothing suspicious (primarily all capacitors look good), so will experiment with it once I have regain the enthusisam to spend....

Thanks once again for all your help and support...best wishes to those still struggling with the problem.

duplicate post

I seem to have a very similar problem, i had occassional lockups on booting at the splash screen over recent months, but nothing a restart wouldn't solve.

today i tried to get an old tv tuner card working, as soon as i reset following installation of its drivers (compro tv tuner) each time windows would get to the scrolling splash screen and sit there indefinitely.

i can get into safe mode with no problems (the last thing to be loaded is mup.sys which is how i stumbled across this thread).

i have removed the tv tuner card, soundcard, second hard drive etc. i have done a complete scandisk, problems were fixed but this made no difference, i have tried all the tips in the post on pg7 and still no bloody difference!

With the added ability of free and easy access to safemode (which i think you guys do not have?) are there any additional things i could try?

i really don't have the time or energy for a complete reinstall and worry this would only happen again (the problem first appeared after a previous fresh install).

Thanks in advance,

Dan

XP SP2
AMD 64 3000
MSI main board
1GB ram
1 SATA Spinpoint drive

I read all the 12 pages of information and wow! I am also sharing my experience here.

Got the error yesterday!. My system was working fine till day before yesterday.

System Specs:
ASUS P4PE
2x512 RAM
80GB ATA Primary Master
200GB ATA Primary Slave
250GB ATA Secondary Master
NEC DVDRW Secondary Slave

Changes made to the system
1. Added new IDE round cable
2. Updated BIOS with latest firmware.
3. 2 days before added a 250GB WD harddrive.(The reason for adding an ide cable was the flat one was not enough lenghty that it reaches from the DVD drive bay to the harddrive bay for the secondary 250GB drive)

Till now, I have tried these steps
1. Flashed the old saved BIOS - no luck, so flashed BOIS with the new version
2. chkdsk /r on windows recovery console. It reported that it fixed some errors but not this.
3. Updated the video drivers(My system was hanging at agp440.sys not the mup.sys)

I have lots of other possible solutions to try out from this thread. I'll try out each one and will definitely post my story.


One more thing I would like to add is that my system is a dual boot system, one with "Win XP Pro" and the other being "Win XP Media Center"(Wanted to try MCE without disturbing my Pro installation). Both the boots were fine till yesterday and both the boots are faulty now. So I am almost sure that it has something to do with the hardware issue. You can see my problem started after I did the hardware/bios changes.


Wish me luck!

Bill

well having said my problem was different and that i could get into safe mode, i now have the same problem!

disabling and re-enabling mup ended with my computer unable to get into safe mode.

i have tried everything and have now just begun a clean install

If you've removed the TV tuner card with no joy, maybe it's the drivers you installed that are causing the heartburn. Have you tried eradicating those? If not, try the following:

First, if your tuner software shows up under "Start->Programs", look and see if there's an "Uninstall" option to delete it. If not, look under Control Panels -> Add/Remove Programs, and see if there are any items in that list related to your tuner card, and Remove anything you find.

Next, open up Device Manager (in the Control Panel, or else right-click on My Computer, pick properties, then go to the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button). Look for your TV tuner device (probably either under "Sound, video, and game controllers". If you find it (the previous Uninstall actions may have taken care of this part already), highlight it and hit the delete key.

Finally, shut down your machine, take the TV tuner card out (if you put it back in after your initial troubleshooting), and reboot. See if that solves the problem.

If it does, and you're still interested in trying to use that tuner card, visit the manufacturer's website and see if they have any newer drivers than the ones you're using today.

Good luck,
Jim

Whoops--didn't see your update in time. Sorry you ran out of options.

Jim

Okay! Another success story!

As I said earlier(read my previous post), the issue is definitely with hardware/bios. BIOS is not assigning the resources properly(why? no idea!)

Okay.. Here's what I did.
1.Removed all USB devices including the USB wireless keyboard, all IDE devices except the boot drive, Removed PCI cards, Removed 1x512 RAM.
2. Reseated the video card, IDE cable, power cable to the hard drive etc.
3. Disabled all unnecessary onboard devices through BIOS setup, like onboard 1394, onboard audio, onboard game controller, onboard MIDI, Legacy USB support etc.

Now I am left with a simple motherboard with 512MB RAM and the 80GB harddrive to boot. And also the keyboard(no mouse). Video is also connected.

When I switched on the system, it booted up in 45 seconds!!! Oh my god, my system is back to normal.

Then, I replaced one device at a time and tried to boot. Everytime it booted within ~45 secs.

One thing I did was I changed the USB port for the keyboard/mouse to another available USB port while the system was up. (The system detected it and installed the drivers for it.)

Finally I enabled the onboard devices also.

Everything works well now for me. I wish you all good luck with your system.

So my conclusion is that it is definitely a hardware/bios issue.


EDIT: Forgot to tell this.. My system is a dual boot system and both WinXP MCE and WinXP Pro are now booting normally.

cheers jim, i had tried all of that with no success anyways.

now my xp install disk is scratched - so i'm doling really well!

Well i made a new copy of windows successfully and installed this, all was working well unitl i loaded the nforce drivers for my msi k8n neo platinum m/b and then on the reboot i'm right back to the mup.sys problem.

this makes me wonder whether there is a problem with the motherboard?

Dan, try this. Disable all unnecessary onboard resources like, onboard audio, onboard MIDI, Onboard Game controller etc, and also disable Legacy USB support. And if it is working, enable one by one.

well i have fixed mine and it appears it was the same problem that jim had on pg3 of this thread. the nforce motherboard drivers cause some sort of a confict when you choose to install the IDE drivers. skipping the installtion of these has lead to 10 restarts without fail so fingers crossed.

have just read all of this thread. WOW! Wish I had seen this yesterday.

I have a FRY's 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 system, 1 GB memory, 2 hard drives, DVD+/-RW and DVD-ROM. XP SP2

I (stupidly) did something to the Registry causing it not to go past MUP.sys. Tried to find out how to activate System Restore if one cannot get to the GUI, was pointed to a possible procedure AFTER I decided it could not be done (anyone have any luck doing this?) and formatted the boot partition of hard drive #1. I was able to access the drive by using Knoppix Linux and Bart'sPE, so retrieved important files first. As well, have a recent backup using DataKeeper on the second hard drive.

Restored the 4 image CD's that came with the system (in lieu of a true XP system CD!) several times, after formatting the partition with NTFS; still could not get past mup.sys. I DID have a message about the 80-conductor cable; FRYs tech support said to ignore it (!) Loaded Win2K on the same partition (after reformatting) and it worked just fine. But I wanted the extra software and features that came with the XP image CD's and XP OS.

My question: Does the fact that it worked fine using Win2K (hard drives, networking, USB 2.0) indicae that the problem is NOT hardware-related?

I have NOT tried letting the system sit for an hour or a day trying to boot, nor have I played with the suggested BIOS options; the system is now at FRY's awaiting their service departments loving care (: (I just today found this site), so I can't try all the suggested fixes. I believe my original error is long since erased in the multiple reformatting, so is irrelevant. (Playing with AutoRuns!)

Has anyone had a similar situation, where the system works fine on WIN2K bu freezes on WIN XP?
Has anyone found a procedure to generate a "real" WIN XP install CD from an image as supplied by FRY's?
(I realize that the image will not have the cab files set up the same way.)
And, does anyone have an easy way to access a System Restore Point if one cannot get into the GUI?
(The last 2 are not directly relevant to the MUP.sys problem, I realize.)

Thanks,
Pete

This is a thorough thread (thanks all) but unfortunately I am still stuck having wasted a beautiful summer's day taking this xxxxing PC to bits.

I have exactly the symptoms described.

I have been using the computer successfully for some months - it has dual Xeons (3.4Ghz), a TYAN s2676 mobo and win xp pro sp2. HD is SATA - Western Digital (WD740GD) 74 GB. Video Card: 190664 - ATI (Power Color) Radeon X800 256MB GDDR3. It has loads of other stuff but that is all now disconnected.

After trying to shut it down using standby (I usually just switch it straight off) I now cannot reboot.

I have removed everything but the system drive and video card from the machine.

I have successfully reflashed the BIOS to v 2.02 (Tyan s2676)

I have run recovery console and all the various chkdsk options on the system disk and all seems well.

I have disabled MUP.SYS (but of course this is not the problem).

I have cleared the BIOS CMOS settings.

I have swapped the SATA cables to the drive.

I have fiddled with every possible BIOS setting in both v 2.01 (factory installed) and 2.02 (succeful flash).

The only thing I have not done is completely reinstalled windows but obviously I want to avoid this.

Before this the machine has had no real problems.

One interesting thing: when first rebooting I noticed that the SCSI controller was enabled in BIOS, and the operating system had changed to 'other', both of which are default BIOS settings but are incorrect for this computer. Strangely the diskette controller was not enabled (correct, I have no floppy drive) even though this is also a default setting. So I don't think the BIOS was completely reset (and in any case how can BIOS settings get changed except using the settings utility?)

The only piece of hardware left to test out is the video card I suppose, what are the chances this is the problem? Is there any way to test it, I have no spare. It functions OK during the POST.

Please help!

Iain

I've fixed nearly fixed my installation now and post this in the hope it will help others.

I was fortunate in that my machine had two identical WD 74GB SATA drives only only one of which had the system on. So after following the consensus on the forum that I was looking for a hardware problem I stripped the machine to the bone but to no avail. I was then able to do a clean XP install on the spare disk and build the system back up until eventually I had a fully configured machine (2 Xeon CPUs, Tyan mobo, PowerColor video, Creative Audigy2z audio, highpoint 1640 raid card with 2 x 320 GB SATA drives, ethernet card, 2 cd/dvd drives). Further I was able to run exhaustive checks on the original system disk when using the clean install which found no errors. Using the same bios settings and physical configuration (apart from swapping the SATA cables to the 74GB disks) I found I could boot perfectly off the clean install but not the old setup: conclusive evidence in this case of a software problem.

So I proceed to a repair setup from my Win XP CD. Although it did not run smoothly has now allowed my to boot and I am busy picking up the pieces. The difference between the clean install and the repair install may be instructive in working out what went wrong (remember I encountered the problem after an aborted 'standby' shut down which obviously caused some corruption).

1: I was prompted for file 'ad3.dll' from the Creative installation disk
2: On the first boot up the PC was painfully slow and crashed on exit, reporting a problem with the Raid software (htpsvr.exe)
3: I now detect some instances of the java/openstream virus, may or may not be connected.

This was a horrible problem, hope I never see it again.

Hi guy's, long story with a happy ending.

The nightmare that is MUP.SYS visited my PC and sent me to hell (Ahhh! freeze screen)

My problems began when a download froze my PC and locked me out, I had to re-boot the PC thinking nothing of it, Oh! how I was about to think again.

On re-boot my PC froze at blue screen of death, on XP, nah impossible!, no it isn't, as you all know, re-tried, same again, tried safe mode, this is where I met MUP.SYS and googled my way here on trying to rescue my data and solving the problem.

Well I tried everything suggested here removing hardware and flashing bios etc, to no avail.
(note I had a good working PC with no resent hardware changes)

I even screwed up my other PC trying to get the HDD or XP working (no great prob fixed that PC easily), but I still had this problem, now giving up hope of recovering my data etc, I resolved to just re-installing XP Pro.

Spent hours, felt like days trying to get XP re-installed only to be met with a frozen blue screen glowing at me stating starting windows ( Oh no it wasn't).

Exasperated I tried win98', well what do you know it loaded and ran fine, ah ha! I thought try XP clean install on top now that the PC definately works so not hardware/motherboard problem, it must be a software problem. Oh why can't I even get to repair XP

OK now I'm balder having pulled my hair out, screamed so loud only dogs could hear and threatening the PC with a 2 story drop through the window, Yes thats right same blue screen even when trying to upgrade on win98se, Oh I know try win 2000 (nope MUP.SYS has me a broken man).

After giving in after 10 hours of going round in circles, I go to bed and sleep (badly) the buggers got to me.

Next morning Ureka! well maybe not, ok a few good hours later then, but I solved it,

How you may ask!

Well here is how I got XP to re-install, thats a clean install after reformatting HDD

OK, boot up PC from DVD/CD Rom drive using XP disc ( beginners change boot option in bios to do this)

When presented with the prompt Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver.

You should press F5 (not F6).

A new screen will be displayed with setup could not determine the type of computer you have or you have chosen to manually specify the computer type.

Select Standard PC and hit (Enter).

XP will now install as normal, it did for me and I have had no errors/glitches with using this method, it has now been 3 days of smooth running with many reboots etc getting the software back on.

I hope this tale hasn't bored you or frustrated you as it maybe no help to you, ( Anyway I don't care, I'm doing the happy dance woohoo!) and I hope that those who end up here through having the same problems as me find this fix works for them and saves them from going bald too.

This wasn't a fancy all bells and whistles system.

Athlon 2400XP 2Ghz
MSI 6367 motherboard
80GB HDD
1GB RAM
yadda yadda

Hmmm, I had a similar (and still do from time to time) problem with windows getting stuck on loading agp440.sys. I now know this is a fairly common problem and it in fact has nothing to do with my agp drivers as the lockup screen would lead you to believe, for if you disable the agp440.sys file on loadup, you will instead get stuck on the next loading item, whatever it may be.

I usually end up having to reinstall windows when this happens, but I've heard from numerous people that a simple removal of the mouse and keyboard on startup fixes this problem roughly 60% of the time.

It's worth a shot I figure. Luckily I haven't had a problem since I heard this solution about 7 months ago.

Best of luck-

Hi,

I've been through this issue many times.

The last time was two weeks ago. I was having the usual connect issues with BF2 and just kept cold booting to get out of the 30 min timeout problem. Well you can guess that after a few of these cold-boots the machine gave me the BSOD.

Well relying on previous knowlege I following my time tested recovery procedure.

1) Removed BIOS battery and rebooted to BIOS.
2) Reloaded basic settings and set for reset ESCD data.
3) Rebooted.

This usually works and after a sucessfull boot.

1) Reinsert battery.
2) Change BIOS options back to my original settings.
3) Pray to god that is does not happen again.

Well like a crack-addict playing russian roulette I kept on performing my cold-boots in an attempt to get connected to BF2. Eventually the BSOD returned once again.

Unfortunately this time my regular method did not work. Out of sheer frustration I inserted my SP2 disk and started to reload the OS. Well the BSOD would appear after the press F6 message for HDD drivers.

So I did the following.

1) Removed BIOS battersy.
2) Removed all PCI cards.
3) Removed PCI-EX graphics card.
4) Removed all 4 memory cards.
5) Unplugged the sata
6) Unplugged the 12V and 24pin PSU.

7) Murmered something about using a baseball bat.

8) Reinstalled all cards and memory and reconnected cables.

9) Followed my original recovery plan.

And once again the machine is happy.

For me at least the problem is certainly related to some hardware/bios issue that is hard to fix. I don't think it's really a Windows issue but that Windows gets upset due to some conflict in the BIOS vs the hardware installed.

The main point to remember in flashing your BIOS that I have come to follow is:

1) Unplug the b'stard from the mains. You want all the power removed from the system.'
2) Remove the battery. This is the thing that keeps your screwed settings in place.
3) Boot the system without the battery.
4) Reset all the bios options.
5) Reboot once again.

After this the bios should be in a good state again.

Best of luck.

Pete.

Sorry, you lost me: BF2? 30-min timeout? What do those refer to? I don't remember anything about that from your previous posts.