Bad XP boot...HELP!

[Danzilla]

Hey. This just started and I don't have a clue what to do, other than reinstall the OS.
I'm running XP Pro on an Athalon XP /Soyo Dragon +
Part way through loading windows the system restarts. Again and again and again.
Using the safe boot mode I see that the last two things done before the restart (that I can see) are the loading, from windows/system32/drivers/, of
VIAAGP.SYS followed by
Mup.sys
Then it restarts every time.

It's a new install that I just did last week. It was running fine other than a few glitches that I attributed to an over-the-hill 4MB SIS 6326 graphics card.
Now I can't get it to boot even in safe mode. Grrrrrr. I haven't loaded anything new in a couple days now so there shouldn't be anything new causing this.

Any ideas? I'm desperate.

Dan.

 

[Slikkster]

This seems like your best bet for a fix. By the way, you're not alone with having an issue with restarting and the mup.sys file:

Newsgroup Thread on this problem with fixes

 

[corkyg]

Use System Restore and go back to a date when it was running OK. Most of these things are registry problems.

 

[Danzilla]

Thanks. I'm giving the suggestions a try.

 

[Slikkster]

Your problem (told to me via a PM) is that "sfc" is a program that needs windows loaded in order to run...kind of a catch-22, eh?

Follow the instructions on this page (it's for Windows 2000, but it's the same for XP). You need to boot from the XP CD (your bios needs to be set for booting from CD first). Let XP load all the initial drivers as it prepares for a setup. It's not installing anything...just loading drivers into memory at this point. You'll come up to the screen that asks what you want to do: Install, Repair, or Exit. Just hit the "F10" key at this point and it will bring up the Recovery Console. From here, you can use the Expand command to expand the file "mup.sy_" into mup.sys in the \system32\drivers folder. This way, you'll have a fresh copy of the file. All the syntax for expanding is in the following page:

Windows XP Recovery Console Expand Options

Remember, you're expanding the file from the "I386" folder called "mup.sy_" into "mup.sys in the system32 folder on your hard drive.

So, assuming your XP default folder is "Windows", and your CD-Rom drive is "D:", here's what it would look like at the command line:

expand /y D:\I386\mup.sy_ c:\windows\system32\mup.sys

After you've completed this, exit the recovery console and CD by typing "Exit" at the command line and then reboot. set your bios to boot from the hard drive, then try again to boot into XP with this fresh copy of mup.sys.

Good luck

 

[Danzilla]

Slikkster, thanks. Replacing my copy of mpu.sys was about the first thing I tried though.
From further reading online it seems most likely to be a registry corruption problem, like corky-g mentioned. After following some MS knowledge base instructions for recovering the repair (original install) version of the registry entries, I found that XP would load once more. Of course all the entries for the software I've loaded in the past week (when I installed XP) are lost. I hadn't backed up the registry yet. It had only been a friggin week! Oh well.
For some strange reason XP, although running, seem much slower and unresponsive than it was before the crash. I think I might end up having to reinstall the OS after all. 🙁 I feel so discouraged after my first exposure to XP that I'm thinking of going back to Win ME. It's all Bill's fault. :|

Thanks again,
D.