mups.sys - Server won't boot

[Homerboy]

I have a server provided by a 3rd party that I had to recently reboot.
Upon restarting the machine, everything looked perfectly fine, except that it hung on the Win2k Pro splash screen. Progress bar got stuck at ~50% but the little blue "wave" kept rolling (literally for hours), so it was never locked up or blue screened etc.

So I booted into safe mode and it got stuck at mup.sys Again sat for some time, with no change, no HD activity nothing.

I can not figure this one out. I've googled around, and the "answers" and causes for that matter, are all over the board with no concrete resolution.

Anyone run into this little issue before?

 

[Smilin]

This may be a bit complicated to troubleshoot via forum messages. I can give you the high level overview of the initial steps but if you don't follow 100% you should likely call the server vendor if the OS is OEM or Microsoft if it is retail.

First, mup.sys likely has nothing to do with this. That just happens to be the last thing to load before the OS moves on to loading things it doesn't display.

Do this:
Drop to recovery console, do a chkdsk /p first, try reboot.
If no luck, backup your registry hive files (system32\config\system, software, sam, security) then drop in copies from your windows\repair folder.

If this get's you booting then something bunk was in your registry. The repair version of your registry is likely old as sh1t so you'll want to grab a more recent good copy out of a system restore restore point in your system volume information folder.

If this does not get you booting then you likely have a corrupt or mismatched system file. Perform a parallel install, bring it up to the same service pack. Make backups first then copy the contents of your system32 and system32\drivers folders from the parallel to the original install. Do files only, no subfolders, choose to overwrite when prompted (because you backed up the originals before you started right?).

Reboot into the original. If this does the trick you will need to reapply all security updates since the last service pack.

If you are not 100% comfortable with all this, give tech support a ring. I can vouch for the MS Setup team that handles this stuff... they can fix this.

 

[Homerboy]

thanks for the info
I'm back into windows but 90% of the programs are dead, likely due to the registry being reworked from the ground up.

If this get's you booting then something bunk was in your registry. The repair version of your registry is likely old as sh1t so you'll want to grab a more recent good copy out of a system restore restore point in your system volume information folder.

I'm not sure what you mean by the system columen information folder.

 

[Smilin]

On your C: drive there is a hidden folder called system volume information. You will not be able to browse it without adding permissions for yourself.

Your system restore points are stored there and each restore point will have a copy of your registry. Pick a somewhat recent one and use the registry hives from there.

Look for:

c:\System Volume Information\_restore{ugly guid here}\{restorepoint#}\snapshot

You'll find _REGISTRY_MACHINE_* files which correspond to your system, software, sam and security hives.

 

[Smilin]

Also, since you made it this far it does indeed sound like a damaged registry stopped you from booting. This is good news considering the alternatives.

If for some reason you disabled system restore before all this happened, first kick yourself then PM me. We'll have to look at repairing your existing registry.

If you left system restore points enabled in XP then you should be back at 100% in no time.