Hi all,

Recently the dreaded mup.sys problem reared it's ugly head again on a friends PC. I quickly traced the problem down to hard drive errors and recovered the system (partially) by a chkdsk from the recovery console, booting from the oriiginal XP CD. BUT the hard drive was still sick!!

Sometimes this is a genuine case of a dying disk (I had one a while ago that took over 4 hours to scan and then booted, only the next boot had even more errors!) but bad areas may also be caused by power failure, or a lightning strike or power surge, while the drive is writing data, The drives write heads may then write garbage over several sectors, which then become unreadable.

This corruption may sometimes be fixed by downloading the drive manufacturers service utilities and running a full scan of the drive to correct or replace bad areas (there are always a few spare areas reserved for error correction when the drive is formatted during manufacture).

In this case, the manufacturers utilities repaired some errors and reported the drive was now perfectly OK. The mup.sys error was gone and a further chkdsk said it had cleared up a few more errors in the NT FileSystem. But NT did not agree! It often rebooted unexpectedly (no visible BSOD) and would not defrag properly. A Linux live CD would not look at the NTFS partition and an attempt to transfer the partition to a new hard drive, using the GParted live CD failed, with reports of errors in the NTFS partition.

I gave up and reinstalled XP on a new hard drive (after copying all user data to a spare drive).
The new drive runs fine - no mup.sys errors or other problems - and I reactivated XP online with no problems.

Nick

P.S. If you want to try fixing a drive, using the manufacturers utilities, you must download a special bootable version from the drive manufacturers website (the operating system on the drive icannot be used when fixing the drive). This used to be done using a bootable floppy diskette, but now a bootable CD is more useful. The software boots a standalone system like DR-DOS and gives a series of options (BEWARE the option to LOW-LEVEL FORMAT the drive - this is a last chance option,as it DESTROYS EVERYTHING, but may save the drive if it is really screwed up). A quick scan may not detect all errors, but a complete scan can take a long time on a large drive.

If errors are detected, there is usally an option to repair them. This reads any data remaining, sector by sector, so may only partially recover data (if possible backup valuable data first). the recovered data is stored in areas reserved for recovery during drive manufacture.

After succesful recovery the drive can be said to be "recertified" (in a similar state to a new drive) but it may still not work properly (see my experiences above) unless it is repartitioned and reformatted. This is not worth it for an old drive (the one I tried to fix only ran at 5600 rpm - the replacement does 7200 rpm & has a larger cache) so it's safer to replace it and speed up the system in the process.

Nick

I WAS GIVEN A COMPAQ PRESARIO 1200 LAPTOP... WHEN I TURN IT ON IT DOESNT GET PASSED THE WINDOWS SCREEN AND THEN IT RETURN TO THE COMPAQ SCREEN....WHEN I HIT F10 FOR BIOS IT ASK'S ME FOR A PASSWORD WHICH I DONT KNOW NOW THE PERSON THAT GAVE IT TO ME... WHEN I TRY GOING INTO SAFE MODE IT GOES UP TO MUP.SYS AND IT STAYS THERE... CAN YOU HELP ME OUT WITH THIS PLEASE!!

Not sure if this will help anyone but thought it may be useful to post it anyways. I am in the process of installing a brand new computer, Intel Quad-core, Asus P5E (Intel X38-based) and 4Gigs of ram.

The computer works perfectly throughout all of the installation (including applying all MS patches and installing all drivers, except the graphics card driver). The second I install the driver for the nVidia 7100GS graphics card I experience this so-called 'mup.sys hang'.. Booting into safe mode and uninstalling the graphics card driver enables me to boot normally again.

So yeah. Same problem here. Problem is, I can't even get the recovery console going. I get the load started from the Dell XP MCE cd I have and it seems to get all the way to the end....I see a really fast message flash by. As best I can tell from watching for it specifically twice it says something along the lines of, "press enter to accept default keyboard?" That flashes by then it tells me that the recovery console has been successfully loaded and to type EXIT to reboot. Needless to say it's not accpeting the EXIT command, but the USB keyboard works when selecting boot mode (safe mode, last known good, etc.). I also don't see a selection screen during the boot sequence where I can select operation system (Win XP Media Center, or Win XP Recovery Console). The instructor at my old computer school suggested fixing the registry, as mentioned above, for XP looking for another keyboard since that worked for him.....he also suggested I check out these forums. HUGE amount if knowledge, tips, and tricks in here BTW. I've tried as many of those fixes I can without actually being able to get to a command prompt (chkdsk), booting to SOME system (replace bunk file), or booting to my USB backup drive. Great backup huh? Anyway, my question is: can anyone suggest another way to get up to a dos prompt, or to get into A version of windows. While I've been relatively good at keeping my docs, pictures, music collection backed up, there are still things I would loose with a re-install. I have a feeling that is on the horizon, but I want to exhaust every option prior to going down that road of <insert inappropriate word of choice>.

Thanks so much, I look forward to any help,
Brandon

i have the same f*** problem

try all solutions posted here and everywhere, changed all components and result in a damage motherboard.

now i play CECEE

Hi Brandon,
A Possible Answer (that worked for me!).
Borrow a PC (a desktop or tower) with preferably the same version of WinXP as the one you are using. Connect your hard drive to it - if it is an IDE type, it's best to connect it together with the CDROM or DVD in the second IDE port as slave (if it's from a laptop you need an adaptor). Note that Dell drives use 'cable select' setting so you may have to replace the IDE cable with an 80 conductor type (these always support cable select). A SATA drive may just be connected to a spare port. Check in the BIOS that the drive is detected as slave and does not conflict with the CDROM/DVD etc..

Then boot from a standard XP CD (not a DELL/IBM/HP/COMPAQ special) and go into the recovery console. If, however, the drive is seriously sick, it may not allow you to boot the XP CD!!

You should then be able to run CHKDSK on the drive and fix any faults.

Note that chkdsk may also be possible to run from the XP on the hard drive of the borrowed PC, but there is a chance of upsetting it if the drive being tested is seriously fouled up. With the recovery console, run from CD, it is also possible to run other fixes (like FIXBOOT) if you HAVE to (but this may damage data).

If the chkdsk works OK, the drive may stop causing the mup.sys error (in the original PC) but may still be sick & need replacement. I had one drive that booted after 4 hours and over 4000 errors - but I was able to backup most of the data.

DON'T try to BOOT from the drive in another PC as this will probably make things worse (and cause XP to require re-activation). If the drive is damaged, some data may be inaccessable until chkdsk is run and if you boot from it and run it normally, good data may be overwritten by new files.

Nick

Its not MUP.SyS, its the file after that is freezing. Its a USB Error. Unplug all USB divices, reboot, shut down, and plug them all back in. I promise it works... over 200 posts... what a waist...

Thanks for the compliment on my waist, Peter. I've been dieting, and it's nice to know folks can tell!

Seriously, if you skim even a fraction of this post you should quickly recognize two things:
1) Many people have pointed out that this signature usually doesn't really indicate a problem with the "mup.sys" file itself.
2) There is no single cure-all for this problem. While USB issues are one possible cause for this signature, there are numerous other causes that result in exactly the same signature. For example, in my case it was a bad IDE hard drive cable. For someone else it was a dead CMOS battery. Etc.

The value of this post is that many people have reported the solution that worked for their specific case. Thanks for sharing yours.

Hi, I jus encountered this blardy problem and google led me here.

I have an external USB portable HDD and I put my system to hibernating mode since I'm 5mins away from home and office. But as it shuts down, I unplugged the USB drive and just took my laptop home.

After powering up, there was a prompt saying an error retrieving some back up file. I didn't care much as I use my ext drive more to store my email data which I wasn't going to use at home. Click ok, and the system started to slow down to a state I just cannot take it and reboot the system as if it was still trying to look for my ext HDD.

Next think i knew the window wouldn't start up and hangs at the boot up screen watching the animation bar running left to right... I check into safe mode and it hangs at MUP.SYS.

I guess unplugging all USB should work.. but still the same problem..

What's that command to load the *.sys file one by one??? Maybe can we try not loading the file after mup.sys??

Just thought I'd add my own experience as people continue to have this problem and there doesn't seem to be one singgle problem/solution.

I bought a new Shuttle today (because my laptop died...different story) and a bunch of components for it. The details aren't that important (Quad CPU etc.) Anyway, Installed windows, or rather kept trying to. It would hang during installation. Booted into safe mode and it hung and mup.sys... very annoying. Reinstalled windows, same issue. Stole a friend's laptop, found here... read through the first few pages. Thought 'Ooh... I wonder if its the USB card reader thats causing this problem. Unplugged it from the motherboard and the system booted fine...

Or seems to be anyway, still installing windows... I guess later I'll try and work out how to get the card reader to work without causing this issue (just deleting mup.sys sounds like a good option...)

So bloody annoying anyway! And thanks...

Ok same situation...

Taking advice from recent posters about fixing MBR, and fixboot, and now running Chkdsk /r

i can hear the tick toc-ing of the HDDS as they scramble to repair them selfs.. hopfully it works..


now as far as i knwo what may have casued this problem.. i can only think of one thing that was installed yesterday and that was Apple Quicktimes updater, did itunes and quicktime.... now in the past, Quicktime allways gave me a BSoD... for some reason...

now im thinking they went past the BSoD and moved right into MBR!! but who knows...

i coudl be wrong..

hopfully these tips work as i all ready finished half of my first cup of coffee and are starting to become irratable =/

Not sure if this thread is still alive, BUT here is what recently happened to me.
I pop in a DVD-RW cd into my Lite-On DVDRW LDW-411S and my computer completely freezes up about 1 minute later.. I try restarting numerous times, replace HDD cables, plug everything on the M/B and plug them back in, unplug everything from the back of the computer, try restarting to last known config, lastly try booting into safe mode w/ command prompt and I get the terrible hang up of MUP.sys and thats how I found this forum. So, I take out the CD and put in a Windows XP boot cd, restart the computer and it boots up completely fine. I am lost as to why just inserting a cd/dvd into the rom to burn would cause such a bad error and give that error message if anyone has any explanation as to why it did that I would greatly appreciate it.

Regards,
Gary


Intel Core Duo E6550 @ 2.33GHZ
2.00 GB of Ram
EvGA nVidia 680Sli M/B
nVidia 8600GT 256MB PCI-E

Hi Gary,
This does make some sense as the mup.sys hangup often seems to have something to do with DRIVERS! Your system probably reguards the DVD-RW as a CDROM (by default) when reading the Win XP CD, but needs a driver to accept a DVD-RW (Win XP can write to a CD-RW but has problems with writing DVDs). when you load a DVD capable program - like Nero 7 - the software CD automatically recognises the DVD-RW drive, as it has drivers pre-installed for most available drives (if it's a retail version - an OEM version, supplied with the drive may only have Lite-On drivers).

So if the DVD writing software is not loaded properly, is corrupted, or is an OEM product for another make of drive the disk in the drive may not be recognised, as a blank DVD-RW, due to lack of the correct driver!
Also the drive may not be recognised as a type capable of writing to the DVD - which is a DRIVER PROBLEM So here we go again with the mup.sys hangup!

I had a DVD drive that started to play up - probably sick hardware - and hung up the PC for several minutes if a DVD was put in, but a CD read fine. But that was a Win 98SE system and was fine after a reboot. XP seems to be more delicate.

Have a look at the BIOS settings. A recent motherboard should recognise the difference between a CDROM and a DVD-Writer. If the drive shows as a CDROM or just a DVD-ROM the BIOS or the drive may be sick. But it will be quite happy with a (non-writeable) Windows CD!

Nick

hi ,r u using XP service pack2. if so plz check this out.
To resolve this problem, submit a request to Microsoft Online Customer Services to obtain the hotfix. To submit an online request to obtain the hotfix, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6294451

Hey everybody, I don't know if anybody needs to know how to solve that whole freezing issue with "Mup.sys" but I found something that works. I had this problem about a year and a half ago and i couldnt remember what I did to solve it, but when I came home one night my dad remembered. What we did is disconnect everything (CD-ROMs, Floppy Drives, Zip Drives) everything BUT the harddrive. Then, after everything else is disconnected (leave your monitor, keyboard, and mouse attached, speakers if you want) boot it up. It should start fine, let it run for a little to make sure it won't restart itself (if it does, sorry). After you think it won't shut down, shut it down, then proceed to conenct everything one by one, I started with Floppy, then Zip drive, then CD Burner, then DVD-ROM. It worked.

First off, the comp in question(straight off of the "My Computer Information" printout)
Sys Model Dell XPS (DXP063)
BIOS ver Dell Inc. 1.0.3
OS Win XP Pro
Ver 5.1.2600
SP 2
1GB Ram and a (not totally sure) 250 GB HDD with a li'l over 200 gigs of free space.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that we've had it since around mid-October of '06 and the only other problem we've ever had with it is that one day all of my step-dad's music just up and disappeared. . . ALSO, my mom's suspicious that he may have a network connection set up so he can access all his crap from work which is why. . . (next edit, bottom-ish of post. . . lol?:/)

Condensed version of the printout, but it'll get the point across. It was printed out the day before the problem arose, on the 7th. The next morning, mom turns on my step dad's comp, gets to about the Windows loading page and BAM!!! Bluescreened with the following message

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

"Bluescreen stuff (what to do if it does it again, disable BIOS settings like caching or shadowing, yada yada yada"


STOP: 0x000000ED (0x87381030, 0xc0000006, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

So, did what any technologically inept mother would, and shouted halfway across the house, despite the fact I was outside smoking, for help. Under the assumption that the world was ending (PAPI!!! OH GOD, HELP!!! COME HERE HURRY, COME HERE!!) I dropped my smoke, ran inside, and saw the oh so familiar blue screen with a wall of white text. First thing that came to mind was, Aw s**t mom. what'd you do now? Then I read what the monitor was screaming at us and understood that she probably wouldn't have been the cause. . . probably. . .
So, we rebooted it, same s**t. Restarted it, tried to start it in safe mode, ended up recieving the dreaded driver list straight to the Mup.sys! AND it's hung like laundry.
That was the point where I decided to try the Recovery Disk; only, we didn't have the basic Win RD, but the Dell RD. I knew it wouldn't work, simply from past experiences where basis/generic things have prevailed or model/system specific crap.
With these things in mind, I began questioning my mom, because she used it last the night before. She said the only thing she did was uncheck the "Hide protected system files box.
So I started asking what my step dad had been doing on it recently, and the only thing she could remember him actually doing to the comp was trying to install some software for his new Zune (who says all door prizes at a christmas party are crappy?) and she couldn't remeber whether or not he had screwed up/not finished it or just got off the computer; however, she thinks he saw the bluescreen and just hasn't touched the comp since Sat. Why's that important. . . he still doesn't know. She's neglected to tell him, and I've just not said anything about it. . .
.
.
.
So, writing all these things down, along with the STOP and bluescreen info, I decided to stop by the Microsoft support site.(Used my old comp with 98 and dial up. Comp runs like a dream, despite around 10 years of use, but dial-up makes me want to eat children. . .) Needless to say, they didn't help me very much, except for helping me find the generic recovery stuff I need. . . only I had to use floppies since my comp doesn't have a cd burner, and the DVD/CD player on the Dell doesn't seem to want to work under the current circumstances. So, I scrounged up whatever floppies I had,(needed 6, only had 5, had to format some old game patch for the last one) and proceded with the download. ANOTHER MICROSOFT SUPPORT f**k-UP! Site said it would only take about 11 mins with a 56k Dial up modem, but when the download started, est time was around 2 hours. I didn't have that kind of time. Critical thinking time, remember my PSP and figured I could mooch off the neighbors wireless, save the setup to the common folder so I wouldn't brick my PSP and just usb connect to my comp to get it onto the floppies!

IT WORKED!!!!

So, now I've got my 6 Recovery Floppies, on to the Dell. . . So, it started up nicely, got to the set up and stuff, hit R like the instructions said, and inserted each flop as it asked me to. . . as the last floppy was finished loading, I felt all my worries were a thing of the pa- WTFBLUSCRENE!?!?!?!?

STOP0x0000007E (0xc0000005, 0xF749D0BF, 0x78E9208, 0xF78E8F08)

pci.sys Address F749D0BF base at F7496000, DateStamp 3b7d855c

So, in the end, the recovery crap didn't even work. I'd had it with crappy company support. I decided to Google the interwebs in search for real help for my problem: USER SUPPORT!!!! *w00t*

So after countless hours of google searching multiple different combinations of the STOP errors and a couple other things, I ran into a website with awesome descriptions of the Mup.sys and what it is/does and such. Despite all that, it didn't help me as much as I though it would, since most of their suggestions required being able to use the recovery disk or being able to get on Safe Mode. . . Thats when I went back to searching and found this AWESOME site that'll more than likely help me with a couple minor annoyances concerning my 98, as well.

NOW, since it's almost 11 and I'm not totally coherent, I'm not going to bother trying to solve this problem tonight. Instead, I'll take about and hour to type this u- oh never, already done!

Case in point:
There are a couple of could-be-solutions that I've already tried that haven't worked, namely registry editor method
Recover Disk method.

Things I've yet to try:
Unplugging all USB stuff, making sure that the keyboard isn't one of them, if so I'll have to borrow someones. . .
Complete cutting the comps source of electricity off, waiting a while and then pluging back in and rebooting(Saw it on a different site)
Bare Bones method
Resetting the BIOS, but I think that goes with the BareBones method
A few others I can't remember. . .

EDIT. . . Another method may or may not be rebooting our DSL modem, but I'm not too sure if the same problem would arise as another i read about in an earlier post. . . worth a shot

PLEASE, IF YOU CAN HELP ME WITH THIS PROBLEM, ANY KIND OF INFORMATION(that wasn't mentioned already) WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!

And another thing, if you didn't already PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST!!!

Thanks much for anything and everything,

Pirata

Just to let you know I had success fixing the XP freezing at Mup.sys tonight.
Having just had a 80gig laptop hard disk crash, I used another good 60 gig hard disk which I connected my desktop computer with a USB/IDE adaptor cable and restored the laptop's C drive from my Acronis TrueImage backup.
To start with, when I put this 60 gig disk back in the laptop, it failed to boot, giving the error "A disk read error occurred, Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart."
After researching this problem, playing with a few bios settings on the laptop etc, I eventually learnt that Trueimage failed to create the MBR properly despite it having been restored without error.
I therefore took the HDD out of the laptop again, and connected it back to the desktop using USB. I used the windows disk management to delete the partition and then recreated it and set it to Active. I then used Acronis Trueimage to restore the C: drive again, but this time I didn't restore the MBR/Track0 data. I put this back into the laptop and booted. The disk read error was no longer present, but I was now presented with the XP boot menu saying it hadn't started properly, and offered safe mode, start windows normally etc. The countdown timer started counting down from 30. The moment I chose start windows normally, it froze... never to continue. I booted again and pressed F8 to get some more options - tried safe mode - it loaded a number of drivers and got to mup.sys, at which point it froze again. I tried again several times , and tried last known good configuration, but it always froze at mup.sys.
OK, most of what I described above is a little off topic because the Trueimage problem is an entirely separate issue. But after solving it I reached the mup.sys problem which is being talked about here... with many different possible causes and solutions.
For me, having read through this forum, i realised that I had played with three bios settings.
I had accidentally turned hyper threading off, so I turned this back on.
I had changed the graphics aperture up to 128mb - I put this back to the original setting which for me was 322mb
I had changed the boot order - putting the hard drive above the CDRom - I put this back so the hard drive was the last to be selected. (not that it should have made any difference becaue there was no cd in the drive).
I don't know which of the above three settings was the issue, but I can let you know that this solved the problem for me. It now boots into XP and my system is up and running.
Cheers
Tim

I had the exact same problem: safe mode stops on mup.sys and normal stops on the black screen of death; and with a little effort I fixed it. I hope this helps someone who has a similar problem.

I had a whole bunch of softwares installed and also a whole list of upstaed and hotfixes so whole re-installation would have been a pain.
Along with that I also had a dual boot system with Linux as primary so re-installing XP, while unlikely to fix the real issue, would totally write over my boot sector.

I spent a week going through forums (like this) and KB articles and the cumulative solutiuon that I could gather was what I implemented and it worked so here it is.

I am not absolutely certain of which one specifically was the fix, so I won't leave any details out.

1. I had the HDD as the Primary and DVD as secondary, I swapped that. (Essentially a bus switch).
2. I got myself a new SMPS
3. Disabled floppy on the boot check.
(1-3 enforces that any power related issues are most definitely resolved, after 3 I did try to start XP but it didn't fix the issue, but the startup or rather the blank-up was very fast, so I let it be)

4. Put the XP cd in, and selected the Install XP option (Enter), it will go to a detecting old installations stage. At the end of that, again a repair option will come.
Note: this is different from the recovery console that comes through R.
This will completely over-write all .sys, dll and other system files but leave all your system settings, program installations and user settings intact.
At the end of this ordeal (40 minutes) I got the exact same system back minus any issues.

I had tried just step 4 earlier but the issue kept recurring after a few days.
But this has been workin for a month nearly, so I guess the issue is gone for now.

NOTE: The log-in prompt does take time to come up though, (5 seconds more).
I guess I will live with that for now.
After all this was over, I did a complete XP drive backup through ISO Buster, I suggest anyone else should do the same.

Welp,

I decided to reinstall windows just to get a fresh start and everything was working fine before. After formating, and installing a fresh copy of windows XP Pro with SP2 I get the, I guess infamous, mup.sys error. I know it's not a hard ware issue since everything was working literally a few hours ago. BIOS was reset to defaults but no go, disable mup in windows repair console and no go. Tried both chkdsk /p and /r, no go. Reinstalled and repaired multiple times and no go.

So right now I have three more options to try. 1. Reset CMOS with jumper and battery. I'm trying this tomorrow since it is behind my video card and I and too frustrated to get it out tonight. If that doesn't work 2. Install new motherboard BIOS, since the BIOS I have now is a custom for overclocking I'm going to go with the newest factory BIOS. Finally 3. is probably the culprit. The windows cd I am using is from work but is on a copied cd (it's legit university copy don't worry). I'm afraid the disk is borked and of course I can't find my ancient pre-SP1 windows cd that would probably work.

Really since everything was fine until I reinstalled a fresh copy I'm wondering if anyone fixed it under this circumstance?

Spec:
4400+ Operton
2x1GB PC3200 DDR RAM
DFI LanParty Nforce4 motherboard
2x36GB WD raptors in RAID 0 ----- could this be a problem as well? Again, they are in working condition since the were working a few hours ago. I'm mainly concerned about the RAID and driver conflicts.

Hi all

I just fixed the same problem on my notebook (dell inspiron 9400).
After reading loads and loads of supposed answers, and trying a stack of things, the thing(s) that finally fixed the problem were

1. Uninstalling XP SP 3 RC 1.
2. Deleting Visual Studio 2008 folder

I list them both because I'm not sure which of these fixed the problem.

If you don't have either of these installed, then it's obviously something else.
My suggestion would be to uninstall the most recent application you've installed OR roll back the most recent driver you have updated.

Good luck !