I just recently (this evening) ran into this problem, but I'll keep this short.

I reformatted my computer as it hadn't been in almost two years. Everything went fine, installed drivers etc, then installed SP2 (I had it on disc), restarted and then it stopped. Crashed on boot up, tried safe mode, repair, recovery console, reformat, fresh installs, the works, all to no avail.

It works fine provided I don't update to SP2. Of course I'd rather have it as up to date as possible, so is this able to be fixed?

I've read alot of this thread and have yet to find a fix for my situation. Is there one?

It's a genuine copy of XP that I'm using. Thanks in advance.

Ok I also have this problem and like most of you I couldnt quite read all 26 pages to see if this happened to anyone else. I recently upgraded my computer to an asus a8n sli deluxe with an amd athlon 64 x2 4600+ and I tried just ripping out the hard drive of my old comp and putting it in this one. It starts to boot to windows then seems to hang at mup.sys for a while then I get a blue error screen saying theres a problem with the hard drive. After that I have to reboot. It happened on 2 different hard drives and I know this one is working because I put it back in this computer and it runs fine. Any suggestions?

Luke said, "Sorry, but I didn't feel like reading down through the entire thread so pardon me if this is a repeat;"
Kevin said, "Ok I also have this problem and like most of you I couldnt quite read all 26 pages to see if this happened to anyone else"

A little perspective:
I had my 'mup.sys problem' over a year ago. Since then, I've chosen to pop back in here every once in a while to help folks when I think I can offer something useful. I've "donated" tens of hours to this discussion over those several months. Neither I nor anyone else who has posted solutions that worked for them or offered suggestions for others who were stuck were obligated to do that. We took our own time to try to help.

If you can't afford to take some time to research your own problem and thereby benefit from the time others have already spent helping others with this issue, well...I'm busy too.

I'll give Kevin a hint, though: Read the responses on p. 25. Your answer is very clearly posted there. I know, because I'm the one who posted it, just a few days ago, for about the fifth time, in response to a different Kevin.

I'll do my bit to help. This forum helped me months ago - because I read it all! I fixed another mup problem since without having to ask further questions
I also check back now & then to see if anyone has any new ideas. My problems were partly caused by trying to change a hard drive on XP - I eventually succeeded, but it was one of the nastiest operations I have had to do in 38 years of computer debugging! In Win98/ME you can swap the HDD (with just a few driver problems) but with XP the problems are often FATAL to bootup - and the SYMPTOM is a freeze at mup.sys (mup.sys is NOT the problem).

Many other problems cause freezing at mup.sys (I cured one by setting the BIOS to default values) but changing too many components at once (like fitting a new MB!!) is a sure way to cause problems - and make it necesary to reactivate Win XP, so I can't help thinkin the two things are related......

OK - a few more clues: Luke - yes you do have to load the SATA drivers (this doesn't really belong in this forum).

Frank - Reformatting will destroy the original setup of XP and XP should require reactivation. Loading service pack 2 is another minefield and often shows up problems with hardware added after original XP installation. I had to remove a modem in one system to allow SP2 to load. Try downloading SP2 from the MS website - this version sometimes behaves differently.

Nick Law

Nick - Thanks for the reply.

I got the system I was working on to work. Instead of outright installing SP2 that I had on disc after installing XP, I went to MS and updated to SP1, then get all of SP1's updates, then used MS Update to update to SP2 and it's been working fine.

Obviously there was something wrong with the SP2 I had on disc so I have a new copy of it incase I'm in need of it in the future.

Thanks again for the reply, I appreciate it.

Okay, I fixed my problem, too. It turned out to be a corrupted registry; I think SpyBot was the culprit for disallowing critical changes to the registry. First thing everyone needs to do who has this problem is reset their motherboard bios to its default settings and then if that doesn't help......

Everyone who is at a loss for what to do needs to visit http://www.ubcd4win.com and make this boot CD for themselves. It boots to a special memory/CD-based Windows XP environment that has just about everything you need to diagnose and fix your mup.sys hang-up problem (noted it is not mup.sys that makes the system hang, but whatever is loaded after it). I'm about to PayPal a donation to the UBCD4WIN people because this freeware is extraordinary and it was the only thing that helped me. As you can see, there are probably an unlimited number of reasons for the (files after) mup.sys problem and unless you have a comp. sci. degree, it may prove very difficult to remedy. Do yourself a favor and get the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows and use it's utilities. Its freeware, it is a cooperative development project between a lot of people and its freakin' awesome.

I'm so glad this nightmare is over.

Remember: http://www.ubcd4win.com/ - The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

P.S. Hey Jim Runkey, I could have spent my entire life pouring over every forum that has to do with boot failures and it wouldn't have done me any good. Thanks for being busy too, bro.

Thank you to everybody !

After I invested hours reading the board I realized to give up trying to solve the problem.

Here is what I tried before being succesful:
- Reboot computer
- Change RAM to another slot
- Disconnect all USB
- Disconnect DVD and CD rom (only the HDD was plugged)
- Recovery Console from Windows XP Pro Installation CD
---> I tried CHKDSK with both flags (I believe p and k) and it said that it was not possible to enumerate the volume
- Tried to Reinstall Windows XP Pro on the same partition (Reinstall), it said that the partition needed to be formated because the format is not recognizable
- There was no option to Repair Windows XP Pro when I tried to reinstall windows
- Deleted the ESCD in the BIOS
- Removed the Battery and reseted the BIOS Clock

Here is were Plan B entered in action ... Backup !!
- I used the live version of UBUNTU (Knopix could give the same results) and I copied all my important data to a shared folder on another computer using the network. (30 minutes to complete all the task)

Solution:
- I bought a new HDD, installed windows in that HDD (Master) and I connected my old HDD as slave
---> When Windows came up with the first graphic screen (after the first reboot) it took long time before it said that the HDD "D" (Slave) needed to be checked for inconsistencies with CHKDSK. I let it running. It detected 1 bad sector.

I let Windows to finish the installation.

I removed the new HDD, and installed my previous drive as master again.

It booted up with the only difference that it detected a new hardware, my onboard soundcard and gameport.

Summary:

In my case it was a hardware problem, a bad sector.

Thank you to everybody !

After I invested hours reading the board I realized to give up trying to solve the problem.

Here is what I tried before being succesful (I rebooted everytime I made a change):
- Reboot computer
- Change RAM to another slot
- Disconnect all USB devices
- Disconnect DVD and CD rom (only the HDD was plugged)
- Recovery Console from Windows XP Pro Installation CD
---> I tried CHKDSK with both flags (I believe p and k) and it said that it was not possible to enumerate the volume
- Tried to Reinstall Windows XP Pro on the same partition (Reinstall), it said that the partition needed to be formated because the format is not recognizable
- There was no option to Repair Windows XP Pro when I tried to reinstall windows
- Deleted the ESCD in the BIOS
- Removed the Battery and reseted the BIOS Clock

Here is were Plan B entered in action ... Backup !!
- I used the live version of UBUNTU (Knopix could give the same results) and I copied all my important data to a shared folder on another computer using the network. (30 minutes to complete all the task from inserting the disk to next reboot)

Solution:
- I bought a new HDD, installed windows in that HDD (Master) and I connected my old HDD as slave
---> When Windows came up with the first graphic screen (after the first reboot) it took long time before it said that the HDD "D" (Slave) needed to be checked for inconsistencies with CHKDSK. I let it running. It detected 1 bad sector.

I let Windows to finish the installation.

I removed the new HDD, and installed my previous drive as master again.

It booted up with the only difference that it detected a new hardware, my onboard soundcard and gameport.

Summary:

In my case it was a hardware problem, a bad sector.

Just wanted to thanks Luke Gates above for posting about http://www.ubcd4win.com. He's 100% correct in having a great program that can identify just about any problem. It's not a click and fix program, however their boards are exceptional on helping out those less gifted.

They helped me with this error and I too made a donation!! Seems there is a virus that can cause this error. You can ref my post here:

http://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5670

set apic power mode in bios to enabled. Booted up like a charm. Snap! Thx for this forum!!!

Me again. Has this problem led anyone to have an explorer.exe error either before or after the mup.sys reboot cycle of death sequence?

Looks like a popular problem. I just ran into it now while running Windows update on my main PC. I left the PC to run through the update then when I got back it had frozen so I hit the reset button, only to find it would not boot up. It doesn't boot up in safe mode, either with networking or command prompt.

Specs:
Athlon XP 2400
nForce 2 motherboard
Maxtor 300GB HD (brand new)
Liteon CD Writer
Liteon DVD Writer

My copy of XP comes with SP2 already installed, and it's been running fine on the new HD since May. I've tried switching it out with the old one to see if it boots but I hit the same problem. Booting from the Windows CD doesn't seem to work. I've read about the Recovery Console but I never reach the 'Welcome to setup' screen. The CD loads up to the point where it says "Setup is starting Windows", then freezes. Windows Automated System Recovery is an option but it requires a a boot floppy which I don't have. And I've read all these theories about formatting and installing drivers, but honestly I can't see a way to even get to the HD as I can't enter any kind of console or command prompt.

I'm thinking it's just a dud PC now and the only way to recover any of my work is to bung it into another PC as a slave.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks in advance.

What I did, when I realized that my PC was dying one of the first few tymes, was to grab some high memory capacity DVD disks and throw them in my DVD RW drive and save my most important data on them. I know it may not be much help now, but for future reference it could come in handy.

Ok this worked for me ( RE: mup.sys / boot up issues)

Unplug keyboard.
Boot PC without keyboard plugged in.
Shutdown (from login screen, or start menu if you have auto login)
When the PC is off plug keyboard back in.
you should now be able to get into windows (although you may still need to do extra bits n bobs ?)




http://www.jmit.me.uk

HI,
I signed up to the forum to tell you all about my mup.sys woes, and how I managed to solve it.

I had a problem with my initial rig where it failed to boot and came up with the error "unable to find system driver in windows/system" and the occassional mup.sys error.

At this point I will tell you my rig;
amd3700+
2x 1gig gskill ddr500 ram
msi neo plat 2 mobo with mod'd bios
6800GT GS
3x120 gig IDE HDD
1x LG DVD rewriter
targan PSU

So I decided to replace my HDD as other errors pointed to that problem. So I bought A8N32 Sli Deluxe mobo, nvidia 7600GT, WD 250 gig SATA 2 HDD. Intalled the new hardware and XP pro on one of the other IDE HDD's (the SATA drive is just for mass storage not OS) The machine then ran solid for 3 days performing a range of tasks; everything from SETI packets to DVD ripping.

I decided that it was now time to remove my old redundant IDE HDD from the system ( as now all I was using it for was pulling off old folders I needed) So I turned off the computer removed the old IDE HDD and switched the computer back on. All it would do was just keep on re-booting never reaching the XP load screen. Managed to boot into safe mode and it kept re-starting after it loaded mup.sys so I put the old HDD back in the system and it booted fine. I WAS NOT booting from this old redundant drive (as I had formatted it before removing from the system) It would seem with 4 IDE devices connected it would boot (and the SATA) but with only 3 IDE devices I could not get it to boot no matter which order they were in (master slave)

The only way that I resolved this error was to go into the BIOS and enable NVIDIA RAID and port 1 of the four SATA ports!

I had been using my SATA HDD for 3 days with NVIDIA RAID and the SATA ports diabled! I don't know a lot about SATA but was surprised to find it was not enabled in the BIOS.

So just to shorthand this; problem 1 was solved with a new HDD, problem 2 was solved by correctly configuring the BIOS. I am using BIOS 1103 (intalled by manufacturer) I hope this post helps people with a similar system config as mine.

Another thing.. Using simply softwares HD tach the SATA drive was faster when it was disabled!


Matt

I had a user bring in their old computer with this problem. They had installed a DLink wirelsss PCI card and it was haning on them at the BIOS level while checking memory. I removed the wireless PCI card and it started to boot Windows but was hanging after loading mup.sys. Tried booting from the install CD into recovery mode and it just hung.

I was able to go into the BIOS (version installed was from 2000) and set the bios to load the optimized settings. The computer rebooted into Windows XP with SP2 fine after that.

I just ran into same problem today. Tried everything, including motherboard battery, removing all usb-devices etc. but nothing helped; I wasn't able to boot in safemode or with boot disk.

Then I started to remove my cards, and after the first removal: usb2-card, the machine was back in business!

So, my oppinion: this is not a bad sector in HD problem or a Windows software problem. Problem has to be with hardware; bios, motherboard and PCI-cards.

Hi Michael,

I too face the Windows Xp freeze at mup.sys problem. I know how to go to the recovery console but don’t know how to copy mup.sys. Can you help me?

In my case the problem reoccurs even after numerous Windows Xp reinstalls. Based on the info from different forums I guess it might be due a hardware problem. But I didnot install any new Hardware recently. I need to debug and find which hardware has gone wrong. Is there a way to find the problem hardware when Windows Xp boots up?

Thanks,
Ashok

This is a strange problem I had too. I've read all 26 pages, and this is my problem. (Apologies if my English is hard to understand.)

This is my system:

Asus M2N-E NF570 Ultra MCP Motherboard
AMD X2 Dual Core 4200+
WinXP Pro
500w Power Supply

I have just acquired this computer not more than one week. It was working fine until I downloaded the microsoft updates, and then, when I reboot it for the updates to take effect, there is a blue screen that says Initialization Failed. I rebooted again and again, and this time, the blue screen appears when the WinXP logo is loading, and it flashes so fast I couldn't read what was on it. I can access the BIOs page just fine, if it helps.