First off are they two separate hard drives or one hard drive split?

Either way all you need to do is when you are installing windows, don't repair and do a fresh install and format your C DRIVE ONLY. If you do that you should be good. But if you have anything on the C such as your documents and stuff you will loose it!

good day and good luck
Bryan Wheeler

If this issue continues, I suggest you see a tech and have them fix the problem. It can be a number of issues.
After doing tech support for a major company I discovered that some issues can be limited software supplied by the company for recovery. Also the recovery disks aren't that helpfull if you make changes to the hardware or want to create multiple partitions or change operating systems. I suggest a stand-alone version of windows for this and others issues and when you have it right, Ghost it. The system degrades over time and it's good to refresh it with a new install, from your "Ghosted copy". Multiple partitions have an advantage in that you have another system as backup to repair the original or use while reinstalling a new one although care has to be taken when formating drive C when dual booted.

I have not read all the posts so I am not sure if this has already been suggested or not. I found this form because I have just experienced the mug.sys problem when trying to boot in Safe Mode and the nearly black screen with faint graphic when booting normally.

I deleted the text file ntblog.txt and it solved my problem for me.

I had the same problem. What I did was unplug my keyboard & mouse from one USB PCI card then connected the same to the other set of USB PCI card ports. ( I have 4 USB ports on my Toshiba Laptop, 2 ports on each PCI card). I then booted the PC and it worked. I don't know if this is the end all for this problem but it wotked for me so far..

Eddie B's solution worked for me too. I pulled out my second IDE PCI card and reseated the SATA RAID PCI card. Then it booted fine. When I put the IDE PCI card back in, it booted fine still. Perhaps there was a loose PCI card connection causing this freeze after MUP.SYS.

More details: I just added two new components: (1) a Sil 3512 RAID card with 2 250 Seagate HDs (2) Enermax power supply. My old Antec was not providing enough juice. The HDs were clicking and whenever they clicked, Windows/Linux would hang for 3 seconds. It was worse when both RAID HDs were up at once. One HD was fine, the other had problems. I was about to RMA the "bad" one. Then I tried unplugging my 3 CDROMs and it helped (less clicking). Then I discovered a wonderful page ranting about how terrible Antec power supplies are, perhaps specifically with his motherboard, Asus A7N8X. My exact mb and PSU. The 5V line was weak on the Antec at only 4.4V (in BIOS info) when it needed to be at least 4.6-4.7V. The A7N8X mb used the 5V line more than most mbs and the Antec couldn't handle it, even though it was still within the spec. Much random flakiness occurred. My usb (usb mouse and all usb) shut down once in a while and would come back up if I powered down and powered up again. I am not sure if the HDs didn't like the low 5V line or if they needed more Watts. I would like to guess more Watts (380W upgraded to 480W) except that the Antec 380W should have been more than enough to power my simple system. The system was 2 HDs, 1 DVD RW, A7N8X mb, GeForce2 gfx, 1 sound card, 512M ram, 1 Sil 3512 RAID card, 1 Promise IDE card, 1 floppy. My new Enermax shows 4.90V rather than 4.40V with the old Antec (in BIOS info for the 5V line). BTW, I tried the Antec on another older system and it showed 4.0-5.4V (wildly oscillating) (mb=P5A-B) so it probably isn't just the A7N8X. So the old PSU worked kind of fine (booted) but the new RAID HDs clicked and had 3sec hangs after each intermittent click. The new PSU had no clicks but hung on boot up after printing the good ole MUP.SYS line. But if I unplugged the RAID HDs and booted off my old IDE HD, it booted fine (on the new PSU). My BIOS was already the more up to date version and playing with the BIOS settings didn't help. But pulling the IDE card and reseating the SATA RAID card allowed me to boot. Then I put the IDE card back in and it was fine, still.

When it worked, after the MUP.SYS line, it pauses several? seconds then flashes the keyboard and turns on the usb optical mouse light then opens the black graphics screen and continues. In case anyone is wondering what should happen after MUP.SYS.

So if your HDs click but kind of work, consider trying a bigger/better power supply. And preferrably not crappy Antec.

I have not read all of the posts (28 pages???), but I had the same problem with a machine running XP Home and Pro dual boot. This machine seems to insist on having a PS/2 mouse attached to get past the MUP on either XP. It would not boot either XP past mup with a USB mouse or NO mouse, but with PS/2 it boots both every time with no problems. I did discover that USB mouse was disabled in BIOS, but enabling it fixed nothing. It also refuses a USB mouse with PS/2 adapter. So anyone who has this problem might try a PS/2 mouse to get you booting again...

I've looked through about 15 of the 28 pages posted, but still I don't find my _particular_ problem...and maybe someone can help.

I was using my Gateway laptop with Win XP (standard, not home, not Pro), and the damned battery died. No biggee...it doesn't like to hold a charge, but it's never been too much of a problem...I was just working on some website stuff when it powered off. So, I plugged in the AC adapter and powered up, and lo' & behold, I'm getting the mup of death cyclic reboot. I hadn't upgraded any software just before that; I wasn't playing with the BIOS; I hadn't installed any new hardware. Nothing. I was just on the net when the unit powered off. So what caused the MUP.SYS (or post MUP or BIOS or whatever) problem in this case?

The blue screen doesn't stay on screen long enough for me to read it, and there's no setting in BIOS to get it to stop the cyclic reboot. Fine. Also, as with everyone else who has posted, standard booting, last known good booting, or any of the safe mode booting results in the same cyclic rebooting garbage.

I booted from my Win XP disk and (unfortunately?) let it go towards the reinstallation of Win XP until it got to the point where it said it would reformat my drive. I DON'T WANT TO LOSE MY DATA...so I said, no, let's not reinstall Windows. I tried the Recover console and I get the C:> prompt, but then I can't get a directory of any kind. It says something about the directory being corrupted. So I cannot get anywhere past just that C:> prompt.

I took the HDD out of the laptop and put it into an external USB box and plugged that into another laptop. The drive is recognized but when I try to "explore" it I'm told the directory structure is invalid. When I put the drive back into the Gateway laptop, though, it will try and boot....so clearly the Gateway doesn't think the directory structure is invalid?????

So, I can't get the Gateway laptop to get past the cyclic reboot, and trying to view the drive on another system seems to not work either (bad directory structure). I've tried mucking about with the Gateway's BIOS...nada. I tried pulling the SODIMM memories to get the system to try and "refresh", but that didn't do anything either.

So, what can I do now? I can't seem to view my files on the original (Gateway) laptop, and I can't seem to view them externally via a USB drive box. The Gateway is stuck in the post MUP.SYS reboot from hell, and I can't seem to get past that....

HELP.

thx,
David.

By the way, I tried to RESTORE the WinXP system from the Gateway XP distribution CD, and it says that the WinXP on the HDD is not the same as that on the Gateway XP CD, and it cannot continue...since the HDD has had a few updates since the Gateway XP disty CD, that is probably not that unexpected, but still, I was hoping to just be able to patch the damned OS so I could get back to my files..... just another bit o'info.

Windows XP freezes at MUP.SYS - mup of death cyclic reboot.

My experience with the ASUS M2N-E (the M2N-E has only one IDE channel):

The blue screen didn't stay on screen long enough for me to read it so I made a video and captured the screen. The error message said it was either a Virus or a hard drive problem. Having preformed a virus scan previously, I came to the conclusion it had to be hard drive related. My IDE drive passed the vendor diagnostics test. Due to my high level of frustration with this problem; I tried the shotgun method to fix it. Here is what I did:

Installed a new IDE cable and made my CD drive the only one on the IDE channel. Installed a new SATA drive. Partitioned and formatted the drive NTFS.
Preformed a clean Win XP installation.
Installed the NVIDIA IDE driver from the ASUS M2N-E CD that came with the motherboard.

Observations:
Before, when it would crash, the system seemed to be highly loaded at boot. I noticed the case fan would slow, a change in the sound could be heard.
After, none of the loading is noticed. The system seems much faster when booting and it no longer hangs.

Conclusion:
It is highly recommended that a new SATA drive be purchased when building a system with the ASUS M2N-E

Hello everyone. First time poster...

I too had this problem and it turned out to be a registry issue. Microsoft has an article that allows you to use the system recovery console to copy some of your old system restore files (if you had system restore turned on) and restore your registry to a prior date. Not too difficult to do. I recommend trying some of the other possible solutions on this thread first, but if all else fails...

Microsoft Article 307545
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us

Worked like a charm. I have used this solution for another boot-up hang on a seperate PC and it also worked.

I'm having a similar problem with mup.sys. I haven't read through all 28 of the pages so I'm not sure if this exact problem has came up before.

The problem came about after I forced a shutdown with my power buttin as I was in a hurry, I had done it before and no problems had arrised from it. Next time I logged on, however, my PC got to the windows XP loading screen, the image flickered, the screen went black, then my computer started making funny cliky noises. I left it doing that for about 30 mins but there was no change.

When i next rebooted it was asking me to start in sfae mode/last known good config/normally. When I tried safe mode, it got stuck at mup.sys and made the same clicky noises.

Now, I tried recovery console from the Windows CD, but neither recovery nor fresh install will see my hard drive, despite having performed some checks on it form the provided Dell unitilities boot partition.

I'm about to try to boot linux off my memory stick and maybe find an solve the problem, but any additional comments/help would be appreciated.

I seem to have a variant on the mup.sys freeze.
I have just built a new system.
Mobo M2N4-SLI
1 GB DDR2 RAM
AMD 64 x2 3800+ Dual core processor

I had system rebooting at odd times form the start. Turns out it was shorting power supply.
Replaced the PSU with HIPER Power 435 Watt PSU.

The graphics card (ATI XP 1300) was flashing a lot on boot so I replaced it with an
XFS GEFORCE 7600 GT, which is when the fun and games started.
On the first boot after install, got through the post and windows started, then got along continous beep. After a few minutes the pc rebooted and repeated problem.
Sometimes I could boot in safe mode sometimes not.

I upgraded the BIOS to lastest level. At reboot I received 3 beeps and no boot.
Gave in and took it to my local PC repair guy.
He reset the bios and it would reboot with the same long beep problem.
We made sure all the relevent drivers were at the latest level.
He even reinstalled windows but ended up with the same problem.
It seems to boot ok with an ATI card which he also tried.
I have tried the GEFORCE card in a a Dell PC and don't get the problem.
Previously I had changed boot.ini to display the drivers and the last one displayed was mup.sys.
I have tried some of the solution in this thread with no joy.
I just did a repair install of windows. Ok on first boot but then got the beep and freeze at mup.sys. Rebbooted using last known good config ok. Next boot same problem
I booted in safe mode command prompt and then rebooted normally and it came up. Next reboot - same problem.
So I suppose my solution is to change the mobo or the card.
Any suggestions from anyone else would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Folks,

I have had a few PCs to fix lately & some had similar problems to those posted on this forum, so I guess I should pass on some of what I have discovered (I have read ALL the pages!).

One thing that kills Win XP most effectivly is a sick hard drive. Another thing is too many unexpected reboots (like sudden power failures). You cannot just switch off - like with a frozen Win 98 system - too often without something going sick in the registry, resulting in the good old mup.sys problem, or a blue screen of death.

Problems also occur if too many things are changed in too short a period - this may result in a request to re-activate or a BSOD or mup.sys problem. A corrupted registry - or a registry altered by a sick BIOS - can also cause similar problems. A sick hard drive can give similar problems and a damaged system on a sick drive may not be repairable with the recovery console - even if the registry can be recovered - and it is always possible that a system restore will not work with a damaged drive. A new (clean) install may often be the quickest way to recover a system - but this may mean installing a new hard drive.

The deadliest thing is lightning or the power surges caused during a thunderstorm or power failure. I have had to replace four hard drives recently due to this type of damage (often you get other clues - like a smoking power unit or a modem fried by lightning!).

So - advice for some recent posters!

David: It looks like your laptop drive is too corrupted to reinstall XP. The only way I know to keep the data on it is to fit a new drive, install a new copy of XP and fit the old drive into an external USB2 box, so you can run chkdsk on it and - hopefully - correct it's errors so you can read the data from it.

Mark: You did a clean reload on another drive. That's what fixed it! It doesn't matter if it's an IDE or SATA, a new install on a new drive fixes most things (barring lightning damage).

Daniel: Great idea if you can fix the registry. I have had some luck doing this, but the last time I tried it, some idiot had switched off system restore TWO Years previously, so the result was a bit out of date!

Chris: Clicks from a hard drive usually mean it's dying! The drive's internal processor keeps doing a hard reset (returns the heads to the start of the drive - click!) and then moves the heads to where the data SHOULD be. If the MBR (boot record) is damaged this is often a sign of fatal damage. You have to fit a new drive, reinstall a clean copy of XP and then try a chkdsk on the old one. If you can get data off it, you may then be able to reformat it (the Dell partition should be re-created on the new drive, but you may have to download some Dell utilities on another PC to return the system to it's original state). The drive manufacturers utilities MAY also fix the drive, but the data on it may suffer in the process. To use manufacturers utils you will need to download a bootable ISO image and create a bootable CD on another PC - or go back to the days of the floppy, if the system has one. A CD is best - after all, if your system will not boot from CD, how are you going to reinstall or repair XP!

Julian: It is often quite difficult to get a system with an ATI card to work with an nvidia card (or vice versa). The old drivers must be completely removed in safe mode and the new ones immediatly installed. If his fails,. you get a very upset system - probably with a sick BIOS (when the new graphics video BIOS tries to integrate itself with the system BIOS) and a damaged registry (when it tries to load the sick BIOS during bootup). A reinstall or repair will not work in this situation, but a clean reload onto a reformatted drive (or new drive) should work. You can reformat by using any fdisk equivalent to delete the NTFS or FAT32 partition, then create and format a new one - if you need any data from the upset XP on the old drive, you will have to fit a new drive - with NO previous XP installation on it!

Good Luck to You All (you sure need it!).;)

Nick Law

Nick:
Thanks for the response.
To clarify:
After the PC shop did a complete re-install , I don't think they did a reformat first however, they installed the GEFORCE card drivers immediately on the fresh install and got the problem. I am not sure what difference a reformat would make in these circumstances

regards,
Julian

Hi Julian,

In some ways the 'recovery CD' sold wth many laptops is a good idea. It wipes everything and restores the system to the way it was when you bought it! It will be nice & fast again, the software it was supplied with will be reinstalled and working fine, without all that messy data slowing it down - oh yes, they forgot to mention that all the files you created will be gone and must be restored from the backup you so carefully made (what backup:blush. Naturally your printer won't work either - or any other device or software you installed after buying the system!

So what is a 'reinstall'? If you used Win 98 you could 'reinstall' from the CD and keep all the data and software you had installed yourself - plus printer drivers etc.. But did you notice the little message during 'install', saying "Scanning System Registry"? Oh yes, you keep your data, but also keep the crap left by incompletely removed software, the library files (DLLs) installed by such software, PLUS ALL the DRIVERS for any device ever connected to the system!!

To make sure that XP does not try to reuse your previous graphics card setup, you should install it on a new drive or reformat your existing drive & do a fresh install (I hope you have all your software & peripheral drivers).You then have a fresh system to load your data backup onto. If you must recover the data on the hard drive - why not fit a new one. They are quite cheap and you can plug in the old one (AFTER getting the new one up & running) to recover data. But you do need your software CDs!

Keep in mind that on XP, the effort is to 'Preserve Intellectual Copyright' beyond all else, so any alterations will be closely examined by the system, so that you can be charged for a new license if you make too many changes - if you just make a few (or install a new drive) you just have to reactivate. If you change too much (like the motherboard) you may suffer the dread BSOD or the famous mup.sys. If you have an OEM license, you may also find yourself trying to exlain why there are so many changes before you are allowed to reactivate (the OEM license does allow the motherboard to be replaced if it was destroyed!). Changing the graphics is almost as bad. If the registry still exists (as after a 'repair reinstall') the drivers for the old card will be loaded in preference to the new ones - or the original default drivers loaded by XP during the original installation will be loaded, which is nearly as bad and Wheeeee - another mup.sys hangup!

A real fresh reinstall - with the new graphics card installed - will result in a new registry being built, with a new driver database and none of the original graphics drivers will be present to foul things up. But to do this, the drive used must be new or reformatted - preferably with all partitions deleted. When the system is working fully, with the new graphics - and reactivated online, if required, the old drive may be connected - preferably in an external USB box (XP will recognise this as a 'removable' drive and get less confused about having two bootable drives on the same system). Any usefull data may then be read off the old drive and it should then be reformatted, because you should not have two copies of the same XP installation on your system - it ain't legal (and we never know what the Genuine Advantage software may get upset about).

So clean out the old registry by killing it and your system should accept a new graphics card - and may be faster with all the traces of old software and drivers removed!

Nick Law

I had an error window pop up (a program not closing correctly - I chose not to send a report to MS), then rebooted to find that my cpu wouldn't start up. I watched my boot sequence - noticed that it stopped at mup.sys. I am very irritated at myself for doing this, but following the first advice I got, using my repair cd I disabled mup, thinking that if it didn't work I could just re-enable it. The disabling worked, and I wrote down the message that the computer gave me. After I tried to reboot (which was unsuccessful), I went back into repair to find that my DOS prompt no longer said c:\windows: -- it said c:\.... I typed 'enable mup', doesn't work. I typed c:\dir -- does NOT show a windows directory!!!

I am desperate (as is everyone else I guess) to save my files and don't want to reformat for that reason. My questions are:
1. why can't I (or more appropriately) how can I enable mup? (I tried copying it from another cpu to no benefit since I have no windows directory) would that even fix my prob at this point.

2. where did windows go?

3. since c:\dir does not show a windows directory, does that mean all my stuff is already lost?

To add on..

I just did c:\dir, it shows 2 files other than the ones I installed to try to fix this problem. Both of those 2 files are 0 bytes. The first one is "XO", the second is named "found.000". So I think I had a virus that formatted my drive...?

I find it so hard to believe, because what started the 'no windows directory' business was disabling the mup - which changed my settings from SERVICE_BOOT_START TO SERVICE_DISABLED... I tried to enable the boot start again but it was futile because my c:\ is empty...?

I am really confused - did I cause this to happen by simply disabling the mup?

Well I fixed mine In the end what I did was change the drive setting in the BIOS from APCI to something else (I'm not really a techy person ) and then when I ran the recovery cinsole off my CD the harddrive had miraculuously reappeared. I proceded to reoair my installation and now everything is running smoothly again. Certainly won't be doing any more forced shutdowns for a while

Hi Erica,
As many have found out - and posted elsewhere in this forum, mup.sys (as a file) has little to do with the actual error! It is just the last file to be shown on screen during safemode boot, before windows fouls it'self up and hangs, so it does not help to disable it! Some people have researched to find what is the NEXT file to load, as this may be the one that actually hangs, but the actual file to load next seems to vary according to what hardware is present in the system.

What may have happened on your system is that the File Allocation Table on the drive or (less likely) the Master Boot Record has become corrupted, so the drive does not know it has a Windows directory anymore. During bootup, the driver files needed then will not be found and booting cannot continue. The found.000 file may contain some reference to the directories that were on the drive, as it is created by windows trying to repair it'self. If you are using an NTFS partition, it is more resistant to corruption than a FAT32 partition and the chkdsk utility stands a fair chance of fixing the errors if you run it from the XP CD.

Try to avoid doing anything more that could create more files on the drive, as you may overrite files which are not visible at present, due to a damaged FAT. If the FAT is repaired, you may get all of your data back! One way of doing this is to connect the drive to a working PC (with the same version of XP) and try to run chkdsk from the other drive (the best place to connect the sick drive is as Master on the 2nd IDE channel - often occupied by the CD ROM). There is some risk that this could upset the other system, but if it works, it is a fairly quick fix. Another way is to fit a new drive to the PC and reload XP, as if it was a new system, Then use the new copy to read the old drive and try to run chkdsk on it.
The new copy will ask to be activated, but hopefully the repair will be done quickly, so there is no point in doing so (if repair is not fully sucessful and the old drive does not end up fully working, you may be able to copy enough data to the new drive to make it worth activating later).

The File Allocation Table and Master Boot Record can be damaged by power surges or thunderstorms. It looks like your MBR is OK because you can see something on the drive -even though it is not what you expect to see! The FAT is written to very frequently - every time a change is made to any file on the system - and if a power surge happens during updating of the FAT, corruption (or complete erasure) can occur . The data will still be on the drive, but cannot be read until the system can recover a list of he files that are there - and to do this requires that their exact position on the drive is known. This may seem a tall order, considering the vast size of modern drives, but many utilities (like Norton Utils, for example) exist to recover files, if the chkdsk cannot, so don't give up hope easily!

See the Microsoft links in a posting earlier on this page for what to do if the system Registry is damaged. This is quite a hard job to do, but I recently recovered all the files on a crashed system by rebuilding thr registry!

Nick Law

Hi Nick

Thank you so much for the reply. After I posted, I was so upset about losing everything on there - especially my intern stuff - that I didn't want to touch anything else and make my problem worse by possibly making it unrecoverable. Today I took the drive out and over to Computer Renaissance and they said they could probably at least recover my files.. which is all I care about. Everything else is replaceable.

So my part of this problem is over hopefully forever.

Good luck to everyone on this problem with the obscure fix.

Erica