Can anyone help me with this? My machine is still hosed after many months.
I have a home made machine built from scratch and a formatted drive with newly installed windows XP. XP doesn't like to boot, especially after I install any updates and software. Every once in a while it does boot regularly and I save a system restore point.
I enabled bootlogging and it seems to crash after loading AGP440.sys. I found a microsoft technote (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324764) that suggested disabling the agp440.sys system file via the recovery console due to an incompatibility with some graphics cards. I have an ATI Radeon card without the drivers installed and this sounded like it could be the culprit, so I went ahead and followed the instructions to disable agp440.sys. The system booted fine afterwards, but I couldn't install the radeon because the software couldn't detect any displays (probably because agp440.sys was disabled.) I got the same error (before disabling agp440) when I tried (just for the hell of it) installing it in safe mode.
Now my computer won't boot except in safe mode, so how am I supposed to install the driver? The error log seems to hang on random drivers, not just the agp440 now. Hardware tests show that everything (memory, hard drive, etc.) is working, so I think it's some driver, but I don't know what. I'm going to look for updated video card drivers, updated bioses, etc., but a point in the right direction would be helpful.
Thanks,
Jordan

bump--thanks

boot into safemode then run the system file checker. Start/Run/ "sfc /scannow" without the quotemarks.
after you do that you will need to eventually reinstall all the updates, and/or servie packs, cause that will rebuild or replace any damaged or corrupted system files. You should be able to boot regular now. Reinstall your chipset drivers. Reboot. Go to

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&...lderID=293

and run the Catalyst Uninstaller to remove all ATI drivers from your system. Then reinstall the drivers for the card. If that doesn't work post back with some system information. mobo? CPU? etc.

Edit: ATIs site sucks. You can't link to a specific driver WTF is up with that? morons. Anyway go to the page the link opens. On the left click on utilities, then various. Then on the right side click on CATALYST - ATI Maintenance Utilities, and look for the uninstaller. As an afterthought you might want to try the uninstaller first, but after messing about with your AGP driver I suspect you will need to replace it when you load the chipset drivers

Thanks so much for your help. I'm still having trouble--I can't get out of safe mode. When I try sfc /scannow I get the error "The RPC server is unavailable."
I have a Intel 865PE Chipset Hyperthreading P4 2.8 Ghz Processor. (That's not prescott, right? I'm hearing about a lot of problems with SP2 / prescott.) I have a MSI 865PE NEOF Mobo, and a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB.
Usually importing a registry file allows me to boot again, however, it hasn't been working now and I'm stuck in safe mode. I was able to load BartPE with the right network and storage drivers but was still unable to update the registry that way (I got "access denied").
Before the most recent crash, I had installed my mobo drivers but not the chipset drivers. Next time I'll try the chipset first.
My system was crashing on AGP440.SYS and MUP.SYS. I tried disabling those from the system recovery console but it still won't boot.
I've been reading about how these problems can be caused by having the wrong "HAL," or ACPI mode in the bios. My processor in device manager says it's a "ACPI Multiprocessor PC."
I guess my next step will be to see if there's a better BIOS I can flash to. After that if it doesn't work I'll try reinstalling windows again, then immediately installing the chipset and radeon drivers.
Does this give anyone any clues to what's happening to my machine?
Thanks,
Jordan

I had a similar problem and so I uninstalled "Microsoft ACPi Compliant System" under System Devices in the Device Manager, it rebooted, it ask em to reinstall all my s**t, so i did it one by one and BAM!!, all fixed. Weird, but worked.

Thanks for your reply.
I'm back up! Ok that was scary...I updated my bios, restarted, and my HD came to a screeching halt and I got two beeps saying my CMOS settings are wrong.
I tried recovering the BIOS but had the same thing happen. I couldn't seem to get it to boot in any way.
I should have mentioned, I have two hard drives connected to a Maxtor Ultra ATA 133 card. Its bios runs before my MSI bios runs. The card came with the maxtor and said it was required for older OSes to recognize all 200 GB. Now though it may be unnecessary with XP.
The MSI bios used to be award I think, but now it's AMI.
Anyway when I boot the Maxtor detected the drives, but the new MSI bios didn't. I unplugged the drives from the ultra ATA card and plugged them directly into the mainboard, and the computer boots.
I hadn't done this before for a couple reasons--one the mobo is ATA 100 and the card is 133, so I thought it might be faster. Two I didn't know if the mobo could handle the 200 GB drive. Having nothing else to lose I tried it and it boots now.
I was still getting the "CMOS settings are wrong" error until I pulled the ATA card out completely. I also had to put the CD ROM in a boot order higher than the HD to boot back into the recovery console and renable mup and agp440. Now I've installed the chipset drivers for the 865PE and installed the ATI catalyst drivers. Wohoo!
I have a couple questions though--will my drives still run fine without this card? I still see that "APIC ACPI SCI IRQ" setting in my bios and it's disabled...Should I enable it?
Thanks everyone for all your help! Getting rid of the ATA card and flashing my bios seems to have done the trick.
Jordan

Oh yeah, and BTW, it's SO much quieter! The computer SCREAMED before, it was practically deafening, and now with the bios update the fan runs at a reasonable speed. Woot!