Fixed my problem as stated above -

"Same problem with the hanging windows load on mup. Happened on a computer thats been chugging away for about 3 years with no serious issues. I'm pretty sure the cause of the problem has to do with a poweroutage that happened during a BootVis reboot session."

Tried chkdsk /r - no effect
Reset BIOS to defaults (in config, not hard jumper reset) - apparently no effect
tried starting computer again in Safe Mode - no effect
on a whim, started up windows normally - BINGO

Windows booted, and BootVis started again like nothing had ever happened.

I'm installing XP on a MacBook using Apple's BootCamp. The original install went fine, XP came up and was working. I installed the Mac drivers from the driver disc that BootCamp creates. Still everything was fine until I restarted. Now I can't get back in via normal startup or safe mode. Tried the Recovery Console and 'disable mup' but it still locked up, this time after the NDIS.SYS file. (I can still get into the Mac OS just fine.)

I'm going to remove the entire partition and try again. I'll try installing the drivers one at a time to see which one causes the problem. From the couple of pages I've read in this thread it could be anything from the motherboard to network drivers to hard disk cables. I can't really mess with the BIOS so I'm hoping it's a driver issue.

no this is a copy of the cd problem, if this is the actual cd you bought there should be no problems those files deal with parts of the sound systemin windows. If this is a real copy of retail xp than its a problem with the drivers, i owul dsuggest reinstall ,dont format, but reinstall if you get the erroer during install dont skip, just take the disc out and put back in until it works i had this problem twice.

Been going through a few of the replies / solutions here for the MUP.SYS, but nothing seemed to work for me.

PC is:
ASUS a7v880 ( newest BIOSupdate today )
Seagate Barracuda 120 Gb Sata
Alot of PCI cards ( sound, WLAN etc ) which have all been giving conflicts. All of them now working, after swapping slots for eterneties.
This seemed to be something I DIDN'T want to do again, on my day off, so:

Situation.
1: PC: all is OK.
Needed more storage - buys Seagate Barracuda, since the last has been perfect.
Now the smallest model my dealer had, was 250 Gb SATA 2 / SATAII, so I buy it.

Now PC gets stuck at MUP.sys.
Swapped the SATA cable to the 2nd HD, to the first, and left the original SATA cable unplugged - Boots fine, and Windows works. So, cable and Motherboard is fine.
The new HD is to blame.
Read the install-help ( actually this often helps ) , http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/sata/st3250824as.html

Set the jumper for 1,5 Gbits / sec, and voila, all worked out fine.
The PC didn't come with any error description, as in the manual was described, but this seemed to be the problem.

Hope this can help some of you, if having similar problems.

Thanks, Poul! I didn't even know some SATA drives had such jumpers. Congrats on solving your problem, and thanks for sharing the solution.

OK I have read pretty much every page of this thread and also all related threads I found on google and done everything I can think of/that I am comfortable with (and even beyond that) to fix this problem. I will try and describe the problem with the best detail that I can, so this post is a bit long but you never know what the specific cause may or may not be.

First of all, I am running a Toshiba Satellite notebook P30-PSP33U with an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 ghz processor, an ATI video card w/ 128 MB RAM, and have been using a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 in the USB port as well as an external hard drive in the USB. I am also running Windows XP Service Pack 2. I have been running them with no problems. It is also important to note that about 2 months ago I had my computer sent for repair, the motherboard was fried and I paid about $1000 US (I am an American student living in the Netherlands) to have it repaired, motherboard replaced, BIOS updated, etc. from an authorized Toshiba Repair Center. Once my computer got back it worked perfectly. However, in the intervening months, a small annoying problem appeared. For no reason, hardware/software related that I could discern the external USB mouse would stop functioning. The rest of the computer was working fine, and I could do a ctrl+alt+del restart using the keyboard. Sometimes the restart would be fine, sometimes it would hang and I would basically let my computer sit and then it would restart fine. As a result of this, I turned my touchpad ON (it is almost always disabled as I use an external mouse) in case this happened again, and then I could troubleshoot the problem without restarting. Around this time, I went into Device Manager to check my mouse and USB ports and all were functioning with the latest drivers.

The other night, I watched a DVD on my computer and then shut it down. No mouse problems, no nothing, just turned it off and went to bed. When I woke up and restarted the computer, it would hang on the Windows XP loading screen. So I attempted a safe mode restart and it would hang on the infamous, mup.sys which led me here. Obviously, I know that it has nothing to do with mup.sys now. So I had access to a windows xp installation disc - i finally got into the Recovery Console (after using a boot cd to blank the Administrator password, as I had no idea what it was). I ran chkdsk and it found some errors and seemingly repaired them. Still a no-go on restarting the computer. I have BIOS access (Phoenix MicroBIOS) but it does not have extensive options, very basic. However, I have noticed that the only way to get XP to even start scrolling and loading is to Disable Legacy USB support. This combined with the USB mouse problems I have been having, and the fact that the problem started immediately after I turned on my touchpad (which I never have enabled) leads me to believe it is some sort of conflict involving my USB ports, the touchpad, my mouse configuration, and/or the Microsoft Intellimouse. However, I have no idea how to diagnose/debug this problem. I am not a power user, and even a lot of the bootdisk stuff I have been doing to resolve this problem is over my head. However, I am comfortable/confident doing pretty much anything with detailed instructions. I would like to avoid formatting my hard drive and doing a clean install (even this has not solved the problems of some other people I have read on this forum) as I have tons of work/pictures/etc. that I would like to recover. What I am wondering now, is what to try next. The options as I see them are creating a new partition and running xp off that and recovering my files and then doing a clean install (is that even possible in the windows recovery console?) or doing a clean install. Any and all help would be incredibly appreciated. I am in the midst of a 20,000 word master's thesis and need my computer badly. Thanks in advance.

I should also add that at one point in my attempts I did try and repair my XP install using the disc and that it re-wrote all the system files and attempted to restart but still would not load.

Hi, Max. You wouldn't happen to be at TU Delft, would you? (Just curious.) Good luck on your thesis!

You told us that when you disabled the legacy USB drivers that you were able to successfully boot. What you didn't share was the computer's behavior after that. Did that, in fact, leave your USB ports completely disabled once Windows was up and running? (I assume that it did; if things worked well, I don't suppose you'd still be looking for answers.)

Microsoft has this to say in general regarding USB troubleshooting: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575 . Mostly that article assumes the problem is with the peripheral device, which is not likely in your case. However, the very last thing is essentially a reminder that "Oh, by the way, your BIOS needs to be working right, too." USB support in the BIOS has been a pretty standard item for many years, now, so I'd be surprised if you have a BIOS version that's got USB support screwed up. However, since they did replace your motherboard, I wonder if it's possible that the replacement mobo had a different version of the BIOS software installed, and USB support was affected. Have you tried looking for online Toshiba support for your laptop model, to see if perhaps there is a newer BIOS version available? (I don't normally suggest users flash their BIOS, since it does have the potential to leave your computer unusable if something happens to go terribly wrong, but this seems like a reasonable thing to consider in your case--normally, BIOS updates from the manufacturer are free, and take only a few minutes to install, though the process sometimes involves creating a dedicated boot disk, which might be problematic with a notebook.)

The only other thing I can think of is that the chip on your mobo that acts as the USB controller may be flaky. Some desktop machines have more than one USB controller on the mobo, and it's possible that some ports can be faulty and others will work fine. (Usually a PC with multiple controllers will have options in the BIOS for enabling/disabling each one.) On a notebook, it's more likely that all USB ports are handled by a single controller, so you're unlikely to have that workaround available. I assume from your brief BIOS comments that you didn't see multiple controllers listed.

If you have a PC Card port available, you could try the relatively low-cost option of adding a couple of USB ports via an expansion card. (Here's a page with some examples: http://tinyurl.com/exx7 .) That way, you could leave the USB support off in the BIOS, and let the PC Card interface handle the I/O with the mouse, allowing you to work around a failed mobo USB controller.

If you were in the US, it'd be easy to pop into a CompUSA or Fry's and pick one of these up to try it, and if it didn't solve the problem, to bring it back for a refund. Dunno if it's that easy in the Netherlands, but that's about the best idea I've got.

Good luck,
Jim

I would like to affirm, however redundant it may now have become, that mup.sys is "generally" not the problem. To be honest, during the last month or so of the spring semester of this year I reinstalled XP a total of 7 tymes, each tyme trying some "brilliant" scheme and leaving out or trying new drivers/hardware as I thought I had tracked down (through process of elimination) the REAL problem. Then I come home for the summer and rarely turn on my computer as I am doing webmaster and site design at my place of employment and have about enough of the internet and computers in general by the tyme I get home (weekends are spent "gasp" outdoors). So last night, when wishing to view "The Juggernaut Bitch" from video.google.com I slap the good 'ole start button and my PC begins the slow, agonizing reboot cycle of death. I sit there, staring at my suddenly hated box of hard-earned components and say to myself "This isn't real." So this tyme I have vowed that I will not re-install XP, I figure I have an entire summer to work on it and friends from the CS school at Purdue to help me along (I'm a dual English-MET major, however odd that may seem) so I should be able to find a REAL solution. After dealing with this for so long I understand exactly how everyone coming to this forum is feeling, and I wish everyone only the best of luck.

Oh, and if I could run CS:S and DoD:S easily on LINUX, I would never touch a Windows machine again in my life.

Hi this is Max checking in again.

I am at the University of Amsterdam. Here is an update on the situation with additional details. Re-reading my intial post it seemed to suggest I was able to boot into Windows. I still have not achieved that. What I meant is that if I disable USB legacy support in BIOS, then I can get into the Windows XP scrolling load screen but it still hangs. If I keep USB legacy support on, then it won't even load the Windows XP screen, it just hangs before the screen even refreshes. The current situation is that because I decided this was a USB/Mouse problem, I disabled the following in WIndows Recovery Console:

HidUSB
i8042prt
mouclass
mouHID
PlugPlay
usbccgp
usbehci
usbhub
usbohci
usbstor

Once I did that and restarted it booted fine, and went through the XP loading screen. Then, because I had attempted to repair my Windows XP install using the recovery CD it went into the XP install screen. It completed "Collecting Information," "Dynamic Update," and "Preparing Installation" and is currently on "Installing Windows." It estimated the setup at 39 minutes. It has been over four hours. The computer is not hung or frozen, the install progress bar is still moving, and the screen is changing to display different features of XP (gee, thanks, sort of hilarious now that I think of it). There is also fairly steady C: drive activity, indicated by a light. I am now at an impass. I fear that if I force a shut down now, I will be left with half a windows installation and be in even worse of a place. However, I am also optimistic that if I restart, load from the HDD with all those drivers turned off, I may be able to get into Windows.

I would like to get onto Windows, dump some important files to an external drive - or even burn them to a CD - and then would be satisfied with a wipe and clean install if this would solve my problems. However, I don't know if I should interrupt the current Windows install. Thoughts? Thanks very much for your advice so far Jim. NOTHING is easy in the Netherlands...and it's a four day holiday weekend here as well...guh.

Same trouble I have, check the connection of socket, dimm , graphic card, hard disk, all the thing look fine but my computer still freeze at setup screen (setup is strating microsoft windows ...)

One strange thing I noted and it takes me to find out the solution when i try to give up and prepare money to purchase a new one. When I am in trouble, my mouse and keyboard will not turn off after I shut down my computer and no keyboard/ mouse wake up function on my computer also. So I wonder is there any power management problem happens,

I disable my ACPI function, and setup my windows, it works. But how can I have my computer runs without ACPI , so I enable ACPI, my computer hangs again.

Finally I found that when I start to setup windows, ACPI must be disabled, setup will not have any problem, after check the system, copy file to HD and restart at the first time during the setup, ACPI can be enabled now, my computer runs find.

It seems I just find out the solution, the matter still remaining, but I think that is stronger than to be with dos mode in several weeks. I searched all mother langue website but no one talk about this problem, finally a find this website. Share my experience, hope all your computer back to normal.

Regards

CK Guan from China

Althon 1700+
MSI N7N2 Delta
KingMax 256 DDR400 X2
ATI 9500 pro
Philips psc 703
Seagate 120G
Seagate 120G

My novel solution was to start following one of the responses on this forum... I reordered the boot devices - setting the CDROM as first...

I tried to start up on the CDROM and the main drive took over and the system is working well again..

the MUP.SYS thing has happened to me a couple of times over the past 3 years and each time simply playing with the setup has resulted in a fix... temporarily at least... an odd problem ... bt a great reminder to back up regularly!!

I haven't been in here in awhile but wow, 23 pages and counting.... this problem has been plaguing us with 2 versions of Windows, 2000 and XP. With all the changes in Vista, I wonder if we'll finally be able to kiss this problem goodbye? Too much to hope for, perhaps?

I now have 3 computers running XP SP2 and so far none of them have had a problem booting. The 4th computer running Windows 2000 SP4 that had this problem over a year ago has been booting/running fine since I fixed the problem. On that machine giveio.sys is the file that loads immediately after mup.sys, and it seems to have something to do with hardware monitoring, like temperatures etc. Speedfan and MBM use it, but I don't have either of those on the Win2K machine, nevertheless giveio.sys loads anyway.
On many machines agp440.sys is the next file in line after mup.sys, but it seems to depend on what hardware you have as to which file will load after mup. As myself and others have reminded many times on this thread, the problem revolves around some type of hardware glitch. Formatting and reloading Windows isn't a guaranteed fix.

It appears my fix was with and IDE cable or a SATA adaptec card that was miscommunicating with the rest of the system. Thank God!

Wow, I have been reading most of the post tyring to find my problem, but have not seen it yet.

Have a system running great for several months. Started getting the mup.sys problem. Tried just about everything posted on this site. Finally gave up. Took another old hard drive and put it in the machine. Going to format it and reload WIN XP just to get it working again. On a whim I turned the machine on and it worked fine. Even put the other hard drive in as a slave and it also worked fine.

When I put the old hard drive back as master the thing hangs up again. I have lost my WIN XP code and it is on the hard drive that is locking up, so I have to use it to get on the web. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Well, you've done a good job of isolating the problem to having some relation to your original boot drive. Have you tried the easy stuff, like swapping out the drive cable, double-checking master/slave jumper settings, etc?

Also, have you tried booting your original drive (that exhibits the problem), and letting it sit there for a long time (like overnight) to see if it manages to ever get past the logo screen and on into Windows? You might be able to do that, which would allow you to recover your license key and make further recovery options easier (like installing Windows on a second drive, performing a repair install of Windows on your current drive, etc.).

If you can't get your original drive to boot and can't recover your license key, I can think of one option to try: Copy your original boot drive to a spare drive and see if the duplicate will boot. (NOTE: You should only attempt this option if you're familiar with the steps required and confident that you know what you're doing!)

Is your original boot drive a FAT32 drive? Can you afford to reformat your second drive, and is it big enough to hold the contents of your original boot disk? If so, you could create a floppy/CD/thumbdrive DOS boot disk with the "format" and "xcopy" commands on it. You could then install both hard drives, reboot into DOS, format the "spare" drive, and then copy the contents of the original boot drive to the spare drive, and see if your machine will boot successfully from that spare drive. (You may also have hard drive setup tools from a hard drive vendor like Seagate or Maxtor that will accomplish this process more easily.)

That option's likely to take quite some time (on the order of hours) to complete, and there's no guarantee it will solve your problem. I'm just trying to think of options.

For me, it started on a happy notebook. SUddenly there was a loop, and a Safe Mode attempt stopped at mup.sys.

Tried loading WinXP from the CD and got just so far before a BSOD popped up.

Swapped the memory out and the problem disappeared immediately.

Confirmed that the memory stick was bad on another notebook AND with memtest86.

Problem solved in this case.

Hi guys I hope you can help me. I have read a great deal of the "MUP.SYS" chronicles and I haven't seen anything that seems to fit my problem precisely.

Ever since the machine was built (by myself) it has had SP2 on it. Pretty much within a few hours of it coming to life for the first time I ran all the upadates including the SP2 patch. The AN8 has a NVidia NForce chipset on it and I have heard reference to this in this thread but bare with me while I further explain the problem. Here is the spec of the machine:

ABIT AN8 SLI (socket 939)
AMD Athlon dual core 4200 (socket 939)
Gainward NVidia GeForce 7900GT 512MB Golden Sample PCIE
Mushkin DDR400 2GB (2x 1GB sticks matched pair)
Hiper Type R 580W PSU
LG DVD-RW
1x 160GB hitachi desk star IDE HDD (OS DRIVE)
1x 250GB hitachi deskstar SATA2 HDD (SATA socket one of four)

The machine ran fine for a few days. It's a fairly high powered machine that I built for a friend's parents. Although my friend is currently using (used until MUP.SYS started!) the machine and a week ago we had a LAN party with a couple of friends where we played games pretty much all day (11 hours or so). I thought this was a good test for the machine and it rose to the challenge and was running great and we restarted it a couple of times and the system booted straight up (lucky?).

However, the following day my friend informed me that once he installed an incorrect driver for a webcam that he currently does not have connected it refused to start up for the rest of the evening. Alledgedly he left it overnight and the following day he tried it and it ran fine.

I went round that day to see him and the machine was running and he told me that he wanted to update his BIOS in light of the current problem to see if this helped. I have done this before on my GIGABYTE MB and had no trouble what so ever so we used ABIT's own program to download and install the update. That was sunday last week and he has been without his computer since.

The issue with MUP.SYS was discovered today when I ran the machine in safe mode with command prompt and noticed that it was the last file to be displayed before the system cuts out. It just shuts down.

So the methods I have used to try to get round the problem today are as follows:

The first time I attempted to run the windows setup from the cd it crashed. Then the second time it ran and it allowed me to format the IDE HDD and installed the first part of windows onto the disk.

However, after I had done that and rebooted the machine it crashed again.

I have tried to eliminate various pieces of hardware by disconnecting them or replacing them but unfortunately this is not only the first dual core machine I have ever built but the first PCIEXP machine too so I have no spare VGA card or CPU. Or mother board fo that matter!

At this moment in time I have tried to boot without the DVD-R/RW, AUDIOMAX 7.1 daughter board, the SATA HDD. All of which have been totally disconnected data and power. Unfortunately this has not solved the problem.

I have tried to install windows onto the SATA and it still does not boot I still get the same MUP.SYS error even though I have not yet even completed the installation. As soon as it had done the first bit from the setup CD I restarted and it just crashes again! I also had a spare HDD with a copy of XP pro installed that I know worked on a machine I built some time ago. This also failed to load windows in this new machine.

I have been through the BIOS for about an hour looking at settings and the machine never crashes in this state. I have also performed the full memory check and this says that my memory modules are ok. I have also tried moving the RAM from DIMM slots 1&2 to 3&4. I have also tried selecting in the BIOS the "set by SPD" function on the RAM module settings this has made no change so I have reloaded the optimised defaults.

At the end of the session I tried the 160GB HDD from the new machine in my friends old rig which is a known working machine. It caused the system to crash when loading windows as well.

I ran the machine in safe mode with command prompt and it appears to be crashing when loading the file "MUP.SYS" every time. It always stops at this file. More concerning is that it does it on all the hard drives and in both rigs I had available for testing.

I have flashed the CMOS a few times and my friend has attempted to repair the windows installation while I was not present.

It appears that "MUP.SYS" is a common problem although I have not come across it myself in the past and I have built several PCs for friends and family. To be honest I have never had any real trouble with any of the machines that I've built in the past and they have all worked from the word go. This one however is turning into a real nightmare.

I am so very confused about it as the machine was running fine for approx a week after I built and installed the machine and my friend used it every day. I cannot understand why it just "stopped working". I would hate to accuse my friend of doing something to the machine that has caused this problem and I can't really see how anything in the building process could be wrong with it after the machine has run for a week with no problems. I have been all over the BIOS disabling/enabling various safety features such as temp shutdown etc to no avail. Having not had any serious issues with any of the machines I have built I am at a total loss as to how to fix this.

All of the brands I have used have been tried and tested I built an ABIT based system for my sister a few months back with an AGP interface NVidia 7800GS 512MB card and that has been a dream. It's fast and stable a real dream and it uses the same HIPER type R that I've put in all my computers I've built lately which includes the one I am using now and that is also a wonderfull machine which is currently running SP2 with no issues.

I hope someone can give me some helpfull insight into what the issue might be.

Sorry for the HUGE post guys I didn't mean to take up so much of your time

Hi, Simon. I don't know if we'll be able to solve your problem or not, but I have a couple of suggestions, and one comment.

First, the comment. You said, "At the end of the session I tried the 160GB HDD from the new machine in my friends old rig which is a known working machine. It caused the system to crash when loading windows as well." Please note that unless the two machines are identical, you are unlikely to be able to pluck a WinXP-loaded HDD out of one machine, stick it in another machine, and expect it to boot. WinXP installs far too many mobo- and processor-specific drivers during installation for the load to be compatible with different hardware. What that means is, you shouldn't be surprised that the HDD didn't boot in the "known working machine", and that the failure to boot there means nothing.

Getting back to the rig in question, it sounds like you're willing to re-format the drive and re-load Windows from scratch, but that you haven't been able to successfully complete that. It's good that you're willing to start from scratch, because that makes things easier.

Have you tried putting the rig back exactly the way it was when you first installed Windows (successfully)? Specifically, have you reverted to the older BIOS/mobo chipset drivers? (Not every "upgrade" is an improvement, and generally you shouldn't muck with your BIOS unless there's a specific bugfix or new capability you're looking for. It really shouldn't be a random troubleshooting step to try.)

Theoretically, if there's been no hardware failure, you should be able to put the machine *exactly* back to the way it was when you first assembled the components and installed WinXP. Since it worked the first time you did it, it should work again. Then, don't install the webcam driver until you actually have the hardware and can follow the installation instructions.

Good luck,
Jim

I have found the definitive answer to this problem which has bugged me for 2 years. It is NOT hardware dependant. Please have a moderator or better still an editor contact me so I can go over the solution. This is a classic case where the error can be replicated on ANY system running XP SP2, and removed just as easily.

I am not 'posting' the answer here because it will need substantial editing by someone very familiar with the forum rules. My 6,800 byte essay would no doubt break at least some of the forum's rules, and will need to be cleaned up by an editor.

However I am so confident of the cause and solution to this problem that I think the subject can be forever closed with a single editorial entry.

paws0z :{)

<perks> "definitive answer"....? This I gotta see...... waits with interest............................