After slowly putting everything back to the way I like it in the bios, I found the problem. I usually disable all of the Power Management Features in the bios (Why? I just do..) I found that if the 'IPCA Functions' is set to no then the comp WILL NOT BOOT with WinXP sp2. Now I was successful with one comp when I disabled MUP.sys but that comp may not have had the above function turned off.

What have the rest of you found?


Thank you,

Kevin

I had the same problem with my computer on a gigabyte 7vaxp ultra, and after reading forums after forums, i found some guy who said that the problem could be the 80 pin conductor cable. I changed mine and now the problem is far behind me (it was the final option before pluging out my motherboard)

I hope my situation and solution might help someone.

My situation: Created a ghost image of a Dell GX280 with XP SP2. Tried to push the image to a Dell GX150. System would lock on the file MUP.SYS.

My Solution: After researching the forums for a viable solution I was very confident that it had something to do with hardware, not software. So after removing every extra piece of hardware, diabling everything I could on the motherboard, I was able to determine it was a setting called IOAPIC in the Dell BIOS.

The current setting was OFF. Apparently this is turned on by default but my company had ordered them from Dell with the switch off because Windows 2000 SP4 had issues with it. So after changing the setting to ON, the system booted perfectly and performed just as well.

This may not work for everyone but should definitely be something you should check out.

Hi everyone...

At first when I upgraded to Windows XP SP2, the computer would freeze for about 20 seconds once the startup screen would appear, but then the computer would continue loading. However, once I downloaded the latest round of patches from Microsoft, the computer would start by hanging for 20 seconds and then the progress bar would move extremely slow (the green bar would move one space every minute). So slow that I could never get Windows XP to load. I even tried letting the computer try booting up overnight, but all I got was the same startup screen. I tried booting up into Safe Mode, and the computer would hang after loading mup.sys.

After formatting the computer several times, I found a solution. I have a motherboard with an nForce chipset. I didn't install NVIDIA's IDE drivers and that fixed the problem (you don't actually need NVIDIA's IDE drivers....they're just supposed to make reads and writes faster). I installed Windows XP up through SP2 and installed all of the patches. The computer does not hang at all during the startup screen. Now I know this will not fix everyone's problems, but I hope it helps out a few people at least.

Ed

Food For Thought

As I’ve read the feedbacks and articles on mup.sys , it appears as though no one is sure and each has their own resolve regarding the mup.sys driver issue. Yet, I also see some interesting information on the second page…. regardless I too have the same issues, yet as I read and find finger pointing to SP2, I feel its clearly not the case, or at least not the true cause. Case in point, I setup a multi boot PC; first Win98, followed by Win2000 Pro, then finally XP Pro on the same hard drive each had its own partition, the system ran fine for some time, then it became intermittent with booting to the mup.sys file on XP AND ALSO Win2k – Both Os’s froze on the same file – the mup.sys file, yet both OS’s have different/separate partitions as mentioned clearly indicating to me its not the OS, XP or Win2k .(Both formatted NTFS)

Both OS’s will react EXACTLY the same, freezing on the mup.sys file on boot on the mutiboot harddrive, which appears to be fine since Win98 still boots up ok and to my knowledge does not use the mup.sys file. Anyway, as I mentioned the issues with the mup.sys file was intermittent – sometimes Win2k would boot ok and XP not or visa versa, so in that case it’s a little hard to blame hardware, software, or firmware, mainly BIOS since if BIOS was bad and reporting bad data one would think it to be consistent with both OS’s. Furthermore, I transferred the multiboot hard drive to another PC with a different Mother Board. Interestingly, it does the same thing – freezes on mup.sys. So, I’m just going to hang back and hopefully save my hard drive data some day, but I would like to mention the issue came to me 2 years ago prior to SP2.

I can’t help but wonder if viri has slipped by us all. For example, one of those nasty ol boot sector virus's which transfers itself to BIOS in order to asure itself to stay alive – transferring itself from the hard drive to BIOS could corrupt the data the OS needs returned from BIOS. Additionally, If you reset or flash BIOS the hard drive just writes it back?, if you format the hard drive, BIOS transfers the viri back to the boot sector?, or where ever it plans to hide it.??? hmmm? ---- Ok, so AV should find it right? Well, for my final twist in the mysterious case of the mean and nasty mup.sys file issues I WONDER, could it have been a failed virus written by the government to check up on us all , maybe it was just a test ,or something even more sneeky - who knows!. AND, to keep it a big secrete they took legal action on AV companies not to write an antivirus for it, since maybe it actuly worked rather well and the total percentage of damaged PC’s globally was minimal !!! and they still know everything about our PC's .. dang,,,The Cause and Effect of this “MUPSYS THING “has turned me into a Paranoid Schizophrenic ,,, n I’ll never buy another computer again, I’m going back home , throwing my PC away and gonna work on the farm ,,,

Hi guys,

This thread solved my problem!

I was migrating a HD with a Win XP SP2 installation from an nForce2 board to an nForce1 board (MSI K7N420) and first ran in to the mup.sys problem. I diabled it using the recovery console as suggested here and elsewhere but then Safe mode would hang on NDIS.sys. I then *enabled* APIC in the BIOS, which is turned off by default et voila it booted all the way to the desktop. It did pause for a short while at NDIS.sys, so have a little patience, but for me at least this was the clincher.

Thanks for all your research and posts! Cheers,
Pete

Ok.. this is my current situation. I disabled the feature in the bios that was listed above.. i can't remember what it was but now i'm getting a blue screen crash screen.

This is how it all happened. I got a new LCD monitor, put it in.. and whenever i loaded windows it would turn off while loading. It worked in safe mode. I found that possibly reinstalling drivers would work. So I was trying all different ones.. none made it worked. So i deleted a few more, don't exactly remember which ones. I go to restart and I get the blue screen.. I loaded the defaults in my bios and it started hanging at mup.sys.. I have my windows cd but whenever I boot from cd it says something to the effect of detecting configuration and dies.

I have a paper due tomorrow and my only copy is on that comp. If anyone has any ideas i'd be forever greatful

Problem is not mup.sys - but that is where it freezes.

I found this works - takes time but has worked on 3 machines now.

Boot from XP CD
Let all load until 'Welcome to Setup'
DO NOT SELECT REPAIR
Select 'ENTER'
Then select F8
On next screen when windows has found old windows select 'Let Windows try and repair'
Press 'R'

Let it run - you will need the key again.

It looks as if it is re-installing windows but it's just repairing windows to match equipment and software changes.

On my systems it recovered ALL programs and Files.

If XP2 disc doesn't work - then try again with XP1 on the system.

Best of luck to you all.

Re: Windows XP freezes after mup.sys

I see many problems with "mup.sys". Here's my version. I was upgrading my wife's system from an ABIT SR7-8X (1800 MHz Prescott) 512meg ram to an ABIT BH7 (2400MHz Prescott) 1gig ram. Same drives same video card. Of course, XP Home went crazy with such a massive hardware change. I tried a repair ending up in this insidious "mup.sys" hang. Also I was not told to call and re-register the hardware change. Quite odd don’t you think? It installed or repaired like a new installation. Anyway this “hanging” was manifested with the XP startup screen and the rolling ball. I reformatted the drive for a fresh install with the same results. I went back to the SR7 original hardware configuration with the same anomaly occurring only when the old BTC 24X CDROM was empty (IDE 1 PRI) . I closely watch the POST hardware discovery screen. Every time the system failed at “mup.sys”, the CDROM was not shown as discovered. I had left ATAPI spinning (disks and CDROM) periphery on AUTO. When the system failed the CDROM was not ready and not discovered by the BIOS. When the system came up the CDROM was discovered. I narrowed it down to a power up kicks the old BTC in faster then a soft boot. So the system would boot correctly on power up but not on reboot unless the BTC 24X CDROM was discovered by the BIOS.

I spoke with Andy Schulman who is well aware of the problem but has no solution. I believe it’s a behind some activity lurking behind the scenes. Keep your ears glued to Microsoft. Good luck ladies and gentlemen.

Warm Regards;

Wayne Bjorken

Found this thread from my searching for mup.sys. I had problems very similar to another poster, where a computer would go through cyclical rebooting. Trying "Normal" or "Last Known Good Configuration" only gave reboots. Even selecting "Safe Mode" gave the same rebooting. However, the very last file to appear on the screen in the list of loaded devices was "mup.sys" when "Safe Mode" was booting. I tried using the "disable mup" fix from the Recovery Console, but then it would just reboot at the very next file: "ViaAgp.sys".

At this point I remembered that I had changed the BIOS setting for Power Management from "Enabled" to "Disabled", in order to test some issues with the computer rebooting in the middle of normal XP operation (as the computer user had complained to me). It was immediately after this that the problems started. So I turned the Power Management setting back to "Enabled" and now it boots properly again. Problem solved!

READ THIS POST FIRST, THIS IS THE OFFICIAL SOLUTION, INFO FROM MICROSOFT!!

I spent a few hours reading through posts and forums on the net. I finally found that this seems to be a known Windows XP SP2 - motherboard issue.

Mup.sys is not the culprate, it's just the last file before resources are alocated for WinXP.

With the latest service pack there were some resource code rewritten (theoretically for security reasons). Due to this, mobos that have certain resource sets become invalid sometime after SP2 is installed (note: it may not be right away). All that needs to happen on most mobos is for this resource set (the ESCD) to be rewritten. Most "higher-end" motherboards have a setting in the BIOS to say "rewrite ESCD next startup", but not all do.

My motherboard did have that option, but it didn't seem to work anyway.
So the next step would be just to reset the BIOS. All motherboards have a way to do this. Most boards will have a jumper near the battery with which you can do this. Turn off the power on the power suply. Move the jumper over to bridge pin 2 and 3, turn on power suply for 10-15 seconds (if you hit the power button nothing should happen -- that is a good test to see if it is doing what it is supposed to be doing). Turn the power off, wait 10-15 seconds, switch the jumper back to bridge pin 1 and 2. Turn on power, hit power button, your problems should be fixed.

If they are not, your ESCD may be hard coded somehow. The next step is to try to flash your BIOS with the newest version of your BIOS. Check your manual for all the instructions for that (or I'm sure there are plenty of forums that can describe how to do that).

I'm having the same mup.sys problem..I'm in the market for a new PC. If i install my existing hard drive on my new PC, then will this fix the mup.sys problem ? i.e will the new bios/motherboard make the difference ?or is the problem most likely to be within the windows OS itself ?

Thanks,

First of all. If you are at all a performance buff when it comes to PCs, you should always have a clean install of Windows with a change of mobo and processor. There are too many dirver that will be ascociated with old hardware, even if you remove the old dirvers (which may help a bit) Windows doesn't always do the best job at fixing all driver issues.
I've had a new computer, with old hard drive, never get correct video divers installed and forever got a "missing .dll file" after every start up and a few of those after going into control panel.

But if you don't care about that, and are willing to take the risk, it probably will fix it. If it does not: go through the step on my last post (the one before yours) and that should fix it too.
But yes, most likely it will fix it if it is an unused mobo.

I just try to run the recovery console and re-install XP with the windows XP boot CD. Both of the actions failed with the error message of IRQ1_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. After this message it just freezes. Now when windows boots up in it just stops at the screen that gives u the multiple boot options (safe mode etc...). I don't get the XP start up logo anymore.

Does the error message above alude to a hardware problem or provide any more clues as to what it can be ?

Thanks

I'm not what sure the IRQ1 issue is, I looked around on the net for info on it, with no obious answers, it seems to be a driver issue or a keyboard / PS/2 issue. Good luck on that.

I'd just suggest a clean XP install with SP2 (if you don't have a disc with SP2, you should slipstream it to a disc so you have SP2 on from the beginning.

Thanks for the reply..It was actually a IRQL error which is (as u pointed out) related to a USB print driver or the video card. I can't even bring up this hard drive in "slave mode". the other master works fine on itself, but when i add the corrupt hard drive as the slave, the system freezes again. im going to get a new PC (in the market anyways), install a new drive bring up the old one as a slave and copy over all the data to the new one and then formatt the old drive..lets see how that goes...the fact that even the slave doesnt boot-up..point to any specific problems ?

Hard to say, it's one of those things I'd have to be there test a bunch of stuff to isolate the problem (had to do that to my parent's computer recently after I already spent plenty of time on the mup.sys issue.

But just a few quick suggestions: may still, quite possibly, be a mother board issue or your processor is partially fried. I've run accross a few of those, and the computer seems semi-normal then random things start happening that shouldn't (CD tray in and out, crackle in speakers, discolored blue screens, won't boot up half the time). If you really want to isolate the problem, the best thing to do is start swopping out components until it works normally, sometimes you have to do multiple components.

I'd say this is a discussion for another forum.

Taking out the battery for several hours worked for me--resetting the ECSD in the BIOS did not.

Yeah, pulling out the battery for a few hours will produce the same affect as switching the jumper I was mentioning to reset the BIOS without waiting the time. I guess I should have mentioned at that as an alternative if your board doesn't have a jumper next to the battery and you can't find your manual to find which jumper to set.

I've just come across a problem with this issue. Fortunatley I have several identical machines to play with, so I may be able to clarify this a bit.

I'd just re-imaged a number of machines, when one refused to boot. Running Safe mode, brought up the list of drivers as they loaded, with Mup.sys being the last one. Having reformatted and re-imaged a second time, and having concluded that the issue was hardware based, I though I'd look on the web. So here I am.

As MUP is the last driver to load before windows starts properly, this file will look to be the culprit in a whole host of cases, while it's probably nothing of the sort for most of us. In my case the problem was a dodgy memory module, but it could have been any number of other things.

Hope this helps