Thanks Kevin Van for your reply!

Finally, I got out of the nightmare.

My solution is:

+ Remove everything except Mainboard + CPU + HDD Sata 80G
+ Flash the BIOS with newest BIOS version of 915GAV Mainboard

After that the Startup can pass over Mup.sys and enter into SafeMode, I restart the Computer and happily It run normally. I plugged one by one (Video Card, Memory,...) and lastly all runs OK.

The reason until now I'm not sure what reality happened in the computer to generate such devil trouble like this.

wellllllllllll i havent read all the replies on this thread but by the looks of the posts you guys havent found 1 of the solutions yet

for me the freezing on mup.sys was due to my sata drive *shrugs*

now i disabled the sata controller in the bios then i booted into safe mode.

after that i loaded up windows explorer and went to c:\windows\system32\drivers and looked for the file update.sys and renamed it windowscanlickmysalynutsackupdate.sys and rebooted..went back into the bios and enabled the sata controller again and booted back into windows

viola!

however it will freeze everytime you restart so you need to turn the pc off then on again to get it to boot back in. this trick works for winxp32...i have the same problem for winxp 64 but the renaming trick doesnt work

Just the other day, I poasted this:

"My system started stalling at mup.sys as well one day. I didn't make any changes the previous day. My little sister was playing SIMS and that was it. I couldn't get into Windows, Safe Mode w/Networking or even Safe Mode w/o Networking. I was only able to get into Safemode w/Command Prompt. Regardless, I disabled APIC in BIOS, no change. I re-enabled it, no change. I disabled "Assign IRQ to USB" and that worked. I went back and enabled it, and it's still working. So whatever the hell it was, it's working now. Probably related to the USB as some dude mentioned earlier."



I have multiple systems. A few weeks ago I had reformatted a different system and reinstalled Windows. I updated everything, but I did not have the drivers for the onboard NIC and sound, among a few other things. Today I decided to go online to download the drivers (Abit NF7-S 2.0) off the ABIT site.

I installed the USB drivers first, then did NOT reboot. I then installed the onboard drivers (NIC, sound.. etc), and hit reboot. As Windows started shutting down, I noticed All-In-One Secretmaker's window (check download.com for more information on this program if you don't know... basically it's anti spyware.. etc) showed up asking me if I wanted to allow the installation program to update the Startuplist. I couldn't click "Allow" in time before the computer forced a restart. Needless to say, Windows started up again and froze on MUP.SYS. I tried all sorts of startups (various Safe Modes, disabling/enabling USB in BIOS, etc) but that didn't work at all. I was able to hit F8 and start the previously known good configuration of Windows.

I disabled SECRETMAKER, reinstalled both the USB and onboard drivers, successfully, and was able to restart the computer without anymore problems.

SHORT VERSION: The MUP.SYS issue appears to be a software configuration problem.

I had the same problem - freezing @ mup.sys. My problem started when i loaded service pack 2 for xp pro. I had loaded xp, and all drivers, then loaded SP2. On reboot, froze at mup.sys. I just reloaded xp, loaded SP2 , THEN all drivers. Running since. But mine was a fresh install anyway, didn't have to worry about lost data. Never really figured out why i had that problem.

Please do not be misled, but mup.sys is NOT the problem, itself. Mup.sys is the last thing that people are seeing on their screen that is the starting point for their search to find the problem, which will lead you to this forum, among others. Mup.sys, if seen on your screen, is actually loading properly, it is what comes after mup.sys that is the problem..... for instance, if the line ABOVE mup.sys was the last thing you saw in the boot order, then your problem (not likely to happen) would be mup.sys. I have yet to find an instance where mup.sys ever actually caused a PC to fail to boot, or cause the particular error.

** mup.sys is generally the last thing on the list before the operating system DOES boot, yet I have seen a single, yet rare occasion where there was something that followed mup.sys in the list. (cant remember exactly what it was) The next time you are booting up with a working PC with any version of XP, start in safe mode with command prompt, and you can verify this.

Just a reminder for future searchers that mup.sys is not the problem afaik! Anything is possible, as I stated and could happen but I have never seen an instance where mup.sys actually resulted in being the problem.

This startup error occured after updating my machine via Windows updates. I rolled back and installed all 21 critical updates 1-by-1 and found that the problem happenen after installing hotfix KB890859 - don't know why but I do know that if I don't install it, I don't get the problem!

Hey, I'm having trouble with mup.sys and I am totally lost for answers: I think it's a system file corruption but I've tried to follow some suggestions in this thread with no avail.
I cannot access Safe Mode without the Blue Screen Of Death appearing. In fact, I can't load Windows at all. I can't reinstall it because to do that apparently Windows needs to be running which is a paradox because I can't load Windows. I'm fairly incompetent with computers and I don't understand what on earth Bios is all about, I've tried changing them on bootup but without sucess. Everything I've tried to date comes up with the Blue Screen of Death telling me: "Unmountable Boot Volume ***STOP 0x000000SD (0x812FE8BO, 0xC00000032, 0x000000000x00000)"

If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it, and if you could sorta explain without all the jargon cause like i say i probably won't understand it...

Rob.

My problems seemingly started when I attempted to upgrade my system. I installed XP Pro on a band new Seagate 120G ATA HD, and the system gets stuck on the Splash Screen. No error messages prior, just freezes on the Splash Screen; sometimes it goes blank/black after the Splash Screen freeze (like it is trying to do something) but most of the time it just sticks there on the Splash Screen until I reboot.

The first time I tried installing it (the OS), the sys froze _4 minutes_ before completion; I reinstalled, and after reading all these posts on the subject, I reinstalled again, only to have the exact same problem. I've skeletized the system, taken a close look at the capasiters on both the motherboard (MB) and the power supply (PSU) (lifted the lid for this) and but for one cap that looks as though it is _barely_ leaning to the side on the MB, I don't see anything suspicious. No bulging or leaks apparent.

On the previous install I was able to boot up in Safe Mode; haven't tried again w/this new install. If I could get the system online, I'd to a mem test. Basically, I'm at a real loss here. I tried having Windows do a repair on the install, and that didn't effect the problem. As for reformatting the HD to do a fresh reinstall of XP, I can't quite make out the directions listed in the previous listing. I don't have a RAID or SCSI drive, so why would I press these keys? Windows offers to erase the partitioned drive, so is
is this supposed erasure not really happening?

I've been doing everything that everyone else here has with regard to hardware, trying to diagnose the problem; I'm starting to really wonder how much of a hardware problem this could be.

Since I don't have any problem w/the system booting up 98SE, I just can't imagine where there is a harware problem... if it is the caps or bad memory, why bootup issues with XP and not 98SE?

Rob said, "If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it, and if you could sorta explain without all the jargon cause like i say i probably won't understand it..."

Unfortunately, that's akin to asking someone to explain calculus without using "all that math stuff". The fact that there are 21 pages of replies in this thread indicates that this problem is a tricky bugger, and there's no simple answer. Most of the folks who have licked it have had to delve somewhat into the depths of their computer to fix it. Solutions have included BIOS tweaks, replacing batteries on the motherboard, replacing hard drive cables, disabling / reloading system component drivers, etc.

If you're unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with troubleshooting those sorts of things, and/or if you read through this thread and got a headache because none of it made sense, there's likely nothing anyone can do to offer you useful suggestions for a do-it-yourself repair. You should probably take your computer to a repair place you trust, and let them take a shot at it.

Good luck,
Jim

Ok, I see the problem here, And while, this may not provide a permanent fix, it will allow the system to get by the place where it hangs at the mup.sys file. Booting into safemode alone does not seem to help much as it still hangs here, you just see where it is hanging...

I have a user who had this issue with an hp AMD laptop, after he had given me the laptop in a panic as he was leaving to go to Taiwan monday morning at 2 am and it was sat afternoon.... I simply booted the machine got to the boot screen and instead of simply booting into safemode, i booted into safemode with a command prompt, which allowed me to get a command prompt so that I could choose what I wanted to load next, After this, I was able to get into the control panel, and ended up changing some video settings. This fixed the issue for the time being.

Now 3 weeks later the user brought me the laptop again with the same problem, although I was able to load the laptop into the GUI fine. I thought I would look into the forums to see if anyone had a take on this issue that was not shooting in the dark... well, I suppose i have some more forums to look into to try and prevent this from happening to any of my other users. I just thought I would try to help out people who may be frusterated with a semipermanent fix for the problem.

Thank you,
<i>Clint0n</i>

I am used to the innards of computers as well as software but i couldn't tell you what any of the pieces are actually called lol, similar to a mechanic who can't name the parts of an engine. I've tried accessing BIOS but for some reason I couldn't find it and the hardware book didn't refer to it at all. I tried turning of USB ports and i've tried to bypass it but it still isn't working. I've decided probably the easiest way around it would just to be to format the entire hard drive but do you need to load Windows for this?

Hi,

I have the same problem. When booting in safe mode I get to MUP.sys and there my machine hangs for a while before going into windows safe mode. When I boot in safe mode with network support I can't get into windows at all. Maybe the network driver is corrupted? This started to happen after my wife installed some online games console from our internet service providers.

DId you try booting into safemode with command prompt? I do not see how booting with networking would allow you to get a command line and allow you to continue loading into windows. Try booting windows in safe mode with "COMMAND PROMPT" With this, you should be able to load into windows, open a command prompt, then you should be able to make the changes to the settings you need to fix the issue for some time. refer to my previous post 3 posts prior to this one for more information.

Thanks,
Clint0n

I'll agree that MUP.SYS itself is not the problem.

This seems mostly related to a driver problem, as noted in post after post above where there is resolution, so in an attempt to start organizing this, lets focus on the usual suspects:

Not having a USB 2.0 driver loaded when the BIOS has 2.0 support enabled is a known at this point.
Also related: IRQ assignments to USB in BIOS is a likely culprit.

Not having a proper driver driver for SATA is a likely culprit.

Basically, it would appear that ANY IO driver (or lack of a driver) can trigger this. For instance, I have been reviewing the posts and someone states that their NIC stops working and they now get the MUP.SYS problem.

Also, I have seen SP2 destroy things in this regard as well, seems to be related to it tweaking the DVD burner/IDE drivers in the case I'm personally familiar with.

Turn off in the bios anything your not using (Unused SATA or IDE interfaces and RAID being the most common), one less thing to cause driver issues, and you'll boot faster not having to look to those interfaces for devices.

FWIW, I keep a hiarchy of drivers for that system on my computers, IE:
Drivers
BIOS
Burner
Motherboard
Video

...Etc organized by date in directories below the device so I can easily find them should I need a step back.

Hi Rob J,

It's been a while since I have browsed this thread. Your stop message:

***STOP 0x000000SD (0x812FE8BO, 0xC00000032, 0x000000000x00000)"

I suspect this is really an 0X0000005D since the code is in Hex and SD is not valid. If it is a 5D then your OS is telling you that the processor installed is not supported.

You and everyone else can find all you need to know about stop codes here:

http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php

PS: I did get my DFI mobo back from the vendor but no information on why it was in perma BSOD(ACPI).
And I've never had the issue since I replaced the mobo with my GA-8N-SLI Pro. Not that I haven't managed to mess up this new machine a dozen or so times but so far I've never had to relive the nightmare that is this thread.

Jim's comment about fixing this yourself is correct. I've been working with PC's both programming and hardware for 20 years and although I managed to correct the issue several times in the end the problem won and I had to RMA the mobo. So if you've read the entire thread, certainly the first 15 pages that contain most of the tried and tested solutions, then you're better off seeking professional help. Even then you're taking a huge leap of faith since I'm a PC professional and if someone asked me to fix it for them in the future I'd tell them it would be cheaper to buy a new PC than pay for my time.

I can build, install and configure a machine in a couple of hours. Trouble shooting my own machine had me reinstalling the OS countless times. Uninstalling and reinstalling hardware. Changing and replacing cables, batteries, RAM. Reseating the CPU. In all I probably spen close to 50hrs of real time over my relationship with this devil. Andevery time I got the machine stable it was only a day or so away from crashing again.

Just some food for thought.

Best regards,

Best regards,

Best regards,

Hi Folks,
I have spent rather a long time reading this forum (ALL of it!) as I ran into it recently. It is rather a nasty one & had me a bit puzzled, but the info in this thread is a great help.

Before I continue, just a bit about my experience (as everyone seems to do this). I was an electronic development engineer when I was first asked to fix a computer Central Processor in 1968. So I became chief Engineer (and tea boy) and learned about magnetic core memory (the system had 32 BITS of it!!!). I also taught myself Microcode (nowadays it's built into the processor in a ROM) & progressed upward through real-time machine code to Macro language, assembler, BASIC (Ugggh) and Pascal, while fixing a series of different systems, originally with custom-built processors, but later with various standard chip processors.
I went on an Intel course on the first 8-bit microprocessor - the 8008 - and reported it to be a load of crap (I have not really changed my viewpoint on Intel since).

After working on the first Commodore PET systems (where the diskette system was more intelligent than the main computer!) I was involved in the introduction of the first commercial UNIX sytem to the UK, but in the process, the company began to collapse. I then joined a scientific Instrument company as a Pascal programmer (on Apple II, HP, DEC and IBM PCs) and computer interface designer. I later got to travel around the world as a trouble shooter - fixing the stuff I designed and programmed!

I think my proudest moment was when I upgraded the Scientific Instrument in the AMD plant, allowing them to develop the Athlon!! I am semi-retired now & just fix friends systems.

Anyway, I hated the original PC when I met it in 1982 so I used a Commadore 128 and Amiga 2000 (it runs at1 MHz and still boots faster than my 2.6GHz Athlon!). After being forcibly retired (department closed) I worked for a while on robot movie cameras (controlled by multiple Transputers) mainly testing the kit - and fixing PCs of course! I also worked for a PC service company part-time and rebuilt the PC system at a school, where I had the misfortune to have to keep an NT4 server running!

My systems include Commadore PET 2001, C64, C128, Apple II Europlus, Amiga 2000 with 386 bridgeboard, Amiga CD32, 586 PC, original IBM PC-AT (DOS 3,3 and UCSD Pascal), a Cyrix 266 dual booting Win95/DOS6.22/Win 3.11 and sometimes NT4, an AMD K6-550 Running Win98SE, an Athlon XP 2600+ running Win98 and fedora linux, networked via a router to a Sempron 2600+ (ASUS MB with SATA - used as a testbed) also running Win98SE. I am about to load XP service pack 2 (dual boot) for testing.

Here is my bit for discussion. Obviously the MUP.SYS error has to do with what comes after and what comes after varies with individual systems, as different motherboards use different drivers and graphics cards etc.. So, many different things may cause the same message to be shown. The real nasty is that there may be MULTIPLE FAULTS!!

And here is something I realised that you all seem to have missed!
If you inspect the registry, you will find references to hardware and software. These change if you add software - or HARDWARE! Then Plug and Play comes into operation (or sometimes doesn't). One reason for the slow booting of Windows is that the registry is rebuilt at every reboot and data is loaded from the BIOS! A corrupted BIOS is therefore loaded into your registry and whenever you try to use that hard drive again - in any PC - the corrupted info is still there, until you successfully reboot XP with a corrected BIOS. So you can never get your system to work properly until the false info is corrected in BOTH BIOS and REGISTRY. Changing the motherboard opens up a whole new can of beans and introduces even more problems.

Probably one reason Microsoft are a bit reluctant to discuss this problem deeply is that they use this info for activation - if you change too much hardware, you have to reactivate.

Anyway, I have committed the sin of replacing the MB, I get the reboot after XP pro startup, the MUP.SYS hang in safemode and also hang when trying to repair after booting from CD. I often get another message, saying the HDD is not recognised or is unbootable (which is daft, because I only booted from CD afted getting a message DURING boot from HDD).

Thanks for all the wonderful posts - it really gave me something to think about!
I will go back to do battle with my friends machine with more armour & weapons (Yea - I did do role playing games too)

Nick

Update
I went to try to fix the sick system with a WIn XP CD and a BIOS setup diskette, but as I suspected the BIOS was causing the problem, I tried changing the settings. During this operation I got the message 'unknown flash type' during bootup, but still managed to change settings to 'default' and then to 'Optimised'. The system then booted in normal mode!

Unfortunately this was not a full cure. I set up for a checkdisk (2 HDDs) and the 2nd (drive D) came out OK (this was NTFS with data only) but drive C: showed over 200,000 errors! The system then started again in normal mode and data was accessable. On reboot, the errors came up again in scandisk and it took 4 hours to scan but then booted in normal mode - but guess what - when booted in safe mode, it hung at MUP.SYS !!!
After this, it restarted normally once more (another 4 hour wait for chkdsk) but then hung on the next boot.

I booted from an XP SP2 CD and tried for a repair, using F5 (normal setup hung too). During chkdsk many errors came up and finally I got a message that the hard drive was damaged (surprise, surprise) and the NTFS could not be repaired - setup halted. So I am foiled by a sick hard drive and will try loading XP onto a new drive as soon as I get one!

Nick

P. S. The reason I changed the motherboard in the first place was ' cos the old one died. Looks like it zapped the first hard drive on it's way out!

Nick

Just wanted to say that I had the same mup.sys problem - I checked the BSOD error message and it was a RAM error. From that I disabled the quick boot option on the BIOS and got a RAM r/w error. Changing the RAM solved the problem. I know its not common at all, but if it happened to me, it can happen to others.

Anita

So, I just had this infamous MUP.sys (or whatever comes after) issue myself. This is on a bone stock, 9 month old HP 3500 AMD desktop running XP MCE. ARGH!

I had switched to an old (pre win XP) Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo and after about a week of usage, I got the MUP.sys hang after a spontaneous late-night reboot. My machine runs 24/7.

First, I pulled my sata hard drive and put it in an external enclosure to pull the files I needed before reformatting (that’s what HP and their lovely restore function wanted me do). I hooked this up to my laptop and I couldn’t access the C: partition, only the D: partition where the restore files live. Trying to access C: I got an “inpage” error. Great.. my drive and its contents in C: are hosed me thinks. Then I found yous guys…

Thank goodness I had a full OEM version of XP Home. I rebooted with the XP Home CD and managed to boot to Safe Mode. After backing up all my files (a practice I fell out of), for the heck of it, I tried using Windows System Restore before going for an XP repair install. I removed the Logitech wireless stuff and uninstalled its drivers, plugged in the original keyboard and mouse then restored to a point before I loaded the Logitech and it worked! We’ll see for how long….

Biggest lesson learned, BACKUP YOUR HARD DRIVE! Ya never know when something like this is going to bite you in the tookis!

This seems to be the place on the web for this problem. I've had 2 machines get a case of the "muppers", the first I scrapped because I thought it was faulty hardware. I've fixed it on the second one.

To fix it on my second machine I set the Clear CMOS jumper on the motherboard to reset the BIOS. Windows loads with no problems now.

On my first machine the problems started seemingly out of the blue. One day I restarted the machine and windows would not load. The machine was over 3 years old and so a hardware problem was not out of the realm of possibility. So I replaced it.

It's been a month after I replaced it and my second encounter happened on my new machine. This time I was playing around with the BIOS settings, restarted, and ran into the mup.sys problem once again. Clearing the CMOS has done the trick and I'm back up and running.

My theory behind this error is that it's tied to how windows recognizes hardware. It is entirely possible that some piece of hardware went bad on the first machine and windows could no longer load. When troubleshooting this on the first machine I went so far as to take another windows hard drive from a different computer that I knew had no problems and try to get that windows install to work. I got the same mup.sys problem.

I hope this helps any current and future 'muppers'!!