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My buddy has an HP pavillion Media Center PC that I am looking at. It started to hang on boot the other day, coincidentally when he bought software for his kids that was a game with a usb controler. It hangs at mup.sys and never loads fully to windows XP media center edition.

The paviliion has a restore partition and at the boot up screen I selected to run the system restore. I also ran the hardware scan and irt reported everything was working fine (for what that is worth in PC Doctor)

It backsup the files and data and proceeds to a windows xp restore. The restore completes and I am notified of the sucess and asked to shutdown or reboot. I have selected both options to the same end result, the system hangs again on loading windows XP.

I boot in safe mode command prompt and I see it is again at mup.sys.

I have tried last known good configuration and it loads to the windows xp splash screen but inevitably hangs at the same point every time.

I have also removed all the hardware except C: drive, 1 stick of memory (that i have alternated between the 2 available), cpu. I then try to load windows XP and it comes to the same point and halts again.

I have also placed a new mup.sys on the computer from another machine and from the restore partition which I was able to recover.

I have loaded a windows XP professional disk and boted from it and it begins scanning hardware and doing its preloading. It then hangs at ...Starting Windows XP in the bottom left corner before it even asks me if I would like to do anything. I have used this XP disk on many other occasions as I am a firm beliver in washing my windows frequently.

Does anyone else have any tricks?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by sparkax

Dani AI

Generated

Short, focused addition to this thread for (and referencing ’s pointer):

mup.sys is the Multiple UNC Provider driver that loads very early. When boot hangs there it usually means an early kernel driver, a disk/NTFS problem, or a mismatched/corrupt system-file version is stopping the boot chain — not necessarily mup.sys itself. The practical approach is to repair the filesystem and safely replace or disable third‑party filter drivers before attempting a repair install.

Try this recovery-first sequence (use an XP CD that exactly matches the installed edition + service pack; otherwise the system file versions may not match):

  • Boot from the XP CD and enter the Recovery Console (press R during setup).
  • Run a full disk check and repair, then repair the boot area:
    chkdsk c: /r
fixboot
fixmbr
  • If you need to restore mup.sys from the CD, expand the i386 copy to the drivers folder (replace D: with your CD drive letter):
    expand D:\i386\mup.sy_ C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\mup.sys
  • From the Recovery Console you can disable suspicious third‑party startup drivers (virtual drive, CD‑emulation, or vendor filter drivers) with:
    disable <servicename>

    Use dir C:\Windows\System32\drivers to spot non-Microsoft .sys files and disable one at a time.

If the XP CD itself hangs before Recovery Console, skip to offline diagnostics: run MemTest (bootable memtest86+), and use the HDD maker’s DOS/bootable SMART test or connect the drive to another PC and run chkdsk there. Also reset BIOS to defaults and, if present, switch SATA mode to IDE/compatibility.

If repairs fail, copy user data off the drive (Linux live CD or attach to another PC) and do a repair install or clean install using a matching XP CD. Make one change at a time and document results — that makes it far easier to spot the offending driver or hardware fault.

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