re: General solution to this problem??!!
Monday, June 7, 2004 at 8:53 am Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by SharpSAMmy
(2 messages posted)
Hi!
I stayed up all night and read every single message posted here...
I can see there are a lot of souls troubled by this problem (I will name
the problem in this way but I'm almost convinced that mup.sys or other system driver
crashing is an effect, and not the cause for this issue)...
My problem, however differs from all of yours in one aspect... two of my computers
developed this problem at the exact same time!!!
I bought/built a new computer about 1year ago!
Specs: AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred B 1700+, KT400 Chipset and AGP8x mobo with nothing
but AC'97 sound on-board, 256MB DDR400, 40 GB HDD and the nVidia GF4 MX440 64DDR
AGP8x video-card...
This computer has worked perfectly ever-since... no problems at all even though I
overclocked it since the very first day to 2400+(with cooler for 3200+)...
About a week ago I bought another computer for my girlfriend and used the oportunity
to upgrade my own...
So I bought two identical DDR400 256MB sticks, a nForce2DDR400Ultra+MCP+DualChannel
mobo, a 2000+ Thoroughbred B, 80 GB HDD and a Radeon9200 video-card...
My girlfriends system got all the new parts except for the ram and mobo, which I
replaced with the ones I had!
I then cleared and upgraded the BIOS on both mobos using the manufacturers specifically
designed software and latest updates, I formated and partitioned both the old and
the new HDD, and started a clean XP install on both computers...
When I reinstall I like to do the job just right and I don't stop untill both computers
are ready to use, with all the updates and service packs required, latest drivers
and only using licensed software or share/freeware that I know for sure isn't buggy!
Everything worked perfectly, or so it seemed...
When I was allmost sure I had done everything, I decided to restart my computers
and that's when one of them cracked, the one with NF2DDR400Ultra...
It went on restart after restart just before displaying the winXP logo and progress
bar!!!
I pressed the F8 key and got the system boot option menu, and by selecting the Safe
Mode I was able to see that the restart happened durring or immediately after loading
MUP.SYS... and it kept restarting...
I was finnaly able to boot my system by selecting the Last Known Good Config option
which I didn't want to try at first because of the posibility of a rollback in some
of my last settings and/or installs...
Until figuring what the problem was I kept using this boot option and it worked for
me every time but it was still annoying...
Then my computer started to reset itself...
The computer rebooted spontaneously, but without a relevant cause or a specific program
running...
For all this time (cca. 1 day) the other computer (my girlfriend's) worked fine,
but the next day it too started to crash at boot, but without entering the rebooting
loop... it just displayed the boot option menu by itself as if it had recovered from
a crash, or some other OS error and restartedif I selected any option except Last
Known Good Config...
In this case also selecting the Safe Mode revealed the last loaded sys driver to
be mup.sys...
And, also, by selecting the Last Known Good Config I was able to boot into XP...
Another difference, appart from the rebooting loop, was that this one did not spontaneously
restart, instead it spontaneously freezed... no input available, no mouse or HDD
activity... just the hard reset worked!!!
By this time I was getting prety desperate, and my girlfriend too...
How could this be???
Two different configs with perfectly compatible hardware develop the same issue at
the same exact time??? WTF is this???
I then started to demote every possible cause listed on every possible forum or site...
1. The first possible cause listed was USB2.0...
FALSE... I had XP SP1 with updates, so the USB2.0 driver wasn't an issue and, furthermore,
I had no USB device connected...
2. Then ACPI Uniprocessor PC...
FALSE... Everyone I know (50-70 colegues) including myself had used XP before, on
TabletPCs, Laptops and/or Desktops, for years even, with the system set to ACPI Uniprocessor
PC and this problem never appeared...
My mobos have no BIOS option for disableing ACPI OS and that couldn't be the case
either...
3. Another sugestion was the BIOS update, clear or set to default...
FALSE again, because as I said, I had just flashed the BIOS ROM before installing
on both PCs, and, during the "week of fire", as I call it, I reset the bios a tone
of times, with only temporary success, as the problem reapeared shortly...
4. Other possible blames were the Office 2003 Suite with SecurityUpdates, Nero 6.3
and DaemonTools...
I admit to having both Office 2003 with update paches and Nero 6.3 installed just
before the problem first appeared, but I don't think they were the cause, for I have
had them for some time and only now the problem appeared...
5. A few other allegations have been made, but even though I understand the frustration
and eagerness to blame everything that crosses your path when a bug like this annoyes
you, I couldn't help but find them ridiculous...
Among these I want to reproduce just a few:
1. Cluttered NTFS Drive... chkdsk /f and it goes away... FALSE!!! NTFS has nothing
to do with this... trust me!!!
2. Bad processor!!!... Come on man!?! Do you really think that your computer starts
at all if you have a bad processor... FALSE!!! A damaged processor is a rare thing
and it usualy happens to be dammaged from the moment you buy it, or it gets dammaged
during the cooler installation process... Eitherway this is not the case for computers
which have been runing without problems for some time now...
3. Virus?!? The thought couldn't help but cross my mind too, but on second thought...
what are the chanses of a brand new PC with no network connection and freshly installed
system and software from original CDs have a virus infection??? The answer is simple:
NONE!!!
4. Another amateour-like approach of this issue is that of swapping different components
between slots, etc... The good news when using this techinique is that by aplying
it it's very possible to resolve some problems, at least temporarily, but it will
not be a suitable resollution for a problem that has appeared out of nowhere in the
context of no logical or physical hardware changes...
In my case the true and aparently simple resolution of this issue resided in the
Stand By setting in the BIOS setup!!!
As a result of updating and clearing and loading the default BIOS settings, I unwillingly
changed the StandBy option from S3(STR) Suspend to RAM under ACPI OS to the S1(POS)
POS under ACPI OS (which is the default)...
I set S3 instead of S1 as StandBy option on both mobos in the BIOS setup and it made
the problem permanantly go away...
As a true, uninterested and non-malitious pice of advice I would like to say to all
you computer troubleshooters out there to stay open minded and try to use some common-sense
in your evaluations and conclusions, regarding that matter...
On Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 5:30 am, Sguilly wrote:
>First off Colby thanks for you post as it fixed my problem.
>
>"Boot from CD... hit f5 (hidden shortcut) when windows blue install starts and it
>says 'hit f6'
>Choose "Advanced Conf... Power " system"
>
>The problem for me being, I needed to change my OS from W2k3 to XP due to video
display
>problems with a new digital TV receiver card. Easy process I thought but after
>rebooting to finish the install the machine kept rebooting with the MUP.SYS file
>being the last file shown in the safety mode boot. I am sure this was not file causing
>the problem as there was HDD access for 5 seconds after this was displayed then
the
>reboot.
>
>The strange thing about all of this was I could install XP onto anther HDD using
>the same machine but if I tried to ghost this onto the other HDD that I wanted to
>use it with it would go into the whole constant looping process again.
>
>After trawling through the posts in this forum yours (2nd one I tried) was the resolution
>that allowed me to install on the HDD that I originally could not.
>
>Once again thanks
>
>Sguilly
>
>
>
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