Mup.sys

G

gimilthedwarf

n00b
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
54
Hi,

I'm having some problems with my computer. It doesn't boot, which is bad. When i turn it on it does its thing and when it gets to the point where it should load up win xp the screen goes blank. I tried starting it in safe mode, but while loading the drivers it stalls at mup.sys every time. I figured I would just do a fresh install of windows, but when i try to boot off of a cd it runs through all of the driver and device loading and then says starting windows and stalls there forever. I treid using a different copy of the windows xp cd, but that didn't solve the problem. I also went online and searched for mup.sys and prople said that when they had this problem they unplugged a usb2.0 add in card and their system booted, then they reinstalled their add in card and everything worked. The only problem is that I dont have any add in usb cards.

Basically I think i'm screwed, b/c I can't install windows, and I can't boot from my hard drive or a cd...

Please help

Thanks,
Ben
 
curious.......

did you recently install a windows critical update on your system? Buddy of mine emailed me saying almost exactly what you are. He updated windows and no more boot and it also hangs at Mup.sys. Safe mode not booting either.

I have not seen the computer yet so I am not sure if this was the cause but have you patched your box before the issue started?
 
Same exact same thing happened to me. I tried searching around on google and it said try: deleting it, renaming it, replacing it, go into repair console, taking out pci cards, take out network, diff video card, etc. Tried all that and finally said screw it not worth my time and just reformatted.
 
i did just update windows....stupid microsoft. When you reformated yoru hard drive, how did you do that? did you use another computer to do it? b/c when i put my windows xp cd into the drive and try and boot off of the cd it doesn't work, it loads some drivers and then just stops.
 
Took a look at my friends comp last night. Hangs at Mup.sys as he said in safe mode. Was able to boot off of an XP cd but it took a LONG time to get to reformatting. When it started to look for previous installations of windows I thought it hung on me but finally after about 15 minutes it cleared up. Was able to reformat fine after that.

You prolly have an old win98 bot disk floating around or a friend will. You can use that to boot and wipe your drive clean. Then pop in XP cd to reinstall.

However....

He also had a ton of spyware/malware based on previous conversations with him so I did not consider troubleshooting the boot issue, I just reformatted. So there may be a way for you to repair the problem you are having without blowing out the OS.

.
 
I have heard that there is a really nasty piece of spyware out that causes this issue. The chain of events is always the same

Spyware infection
Remove spyware
Update Windows
dead pc.

I have yet to run into this myself in my business but I am supremely curious to know what this new spyware is that causes this issue. If you could find a way to get into your hard drive (slap it in another computer for a bit) and retrieve your last spybot or adaware log I would be very appreciative.
 
i'll try and see what i can do about that spyware log. I think that is what happened, b/c i run spybot search and destroy reguarly, and i just updated windows, so I will try and see if I can see what spybot removed before I ran windows update.

Thanks for the help, I'll keep you guys posted on the issue.
 
blackrino9 said:
I have heard that there is a really nasty piece of spyware out that causes this issue. The chain of events is always the same

Spyware infection
Remove spyware
Update Windows
dead pc.

I have yet to run into this myself in my business but I am supremely curious to know what this new spyware is that causes this issue. If you could find a way to get into your hard drive (slap it in another computer for a bit) and retrieve your last spybot or adaware log I would be very appreciative.
Click to expand...

Look for \%Program Files%\TV Media. It's a BHO exploit. It blew up one of my PC's (hangs at MUP.sys, which I believe is the Multiprocessor driver..but I don't know so don't quote me) before I figured out that was what hosed it. I would not have known, had I not looked at my other PC and had the same problem (hang at login, blows up video drivers, etc.)

Spyware Infection, Remove Spyware, Update Windows, dead pc.

Adaware doesn't find it yet, nor does 1.5.9.1 of CWShredder, S&D or any others but Pest Patrol (which I am suspicious of and will not put on my PC). I got rid of it by booting into Safe Mode Command Prompt, manually deleting the files and directory, then going into the registry and whacking all of the run keys associated with the TVM crap. Then I rebooted.

I don't advise that just anyone do it this way, but blackrino, I know you know what you are doing :)

It's another POS Alexa variant. I wish someone would sue, jail and possibly implement capital punishment on the "idea wizards" behind this crap.

**edited to add "don't quote me" because I just believe this, I am not certain :) **
 
Someone mentioned they think this is USB 2.0 related, and they are probably right. I'm not sure how you would take out a USB 2.0 card if it is onboard, beyond disabling all USB in the BIOS. Unfortunately this is not an option on many MBs. If your box is already at the hanging point, though, if you can try this it might be worth it.
 
Alexa is very closely related to TV Media if not the same thing.

I've removed TV Media on dozens of systems and your right, it takes a lot of manual work to get rid of it. I really hope that's not what is hosing that file or I am going to have a lot of dead PC's coming in soon.... :eek:


This guy fixed the problem by flashing the bios
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1075087263


and I just found this quote
I know I'm late but you're all wrong.
This is how you fix the VERY common Mup.sys problem.

Boot off the windows cd, load the recovery console.
Type "disable mup"
Hit Enter
All done, windows works. Mup.sys is the service to connect to Novell servers. %99.99909 of people won't need this.

Maybe an admin should sticky this. Almost every Win NT/2K/XP/2003 user will encounter this at some time or another.
Click to expand...
in this forum http://forums.devhardware.com/t7537/s.html

of course, this assumes that it is actually mup.sys that is failing and not the step immediately following the loading of mup.sys.

other people are pointing at USB as the culprit for this issue. Try disconnecting all your USB devices and see if that fixes the issue.

here is another intersting post
If you're seeing Mup.sys on your screen it's because it has already loaded. It's freezing on the file after that. Quite commonly the file is amdagp.sys (AMD has an update to fix this). It has a history of causing headaches. It's almost always video related when this happens. Try booting into safe mode (or VGA mode if that won't work) and update your video drivers with the latest release from your video manufacturer.
Click to expand...
 
This guy had a very intersting theory, could you check and see what yours says?
A customers machine just arrived, I attempted to boot it and sure enough it stalls right at loading of settings, hangs there and reboots (repeatedly). Tried a dskchk, which upon reboot says the volume is unreachable no dskchk was run. Then I inserted the XP CD, set it for Boot from CD in CMOS, setup started, chose the Repair Option, then logged on as Admin., ran a DISKPART>Enter for a disk partition check (w/ no arguments or switches), and sure enough this is what it shows right now;

38171 MB Disk 0 on Bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
-: Partition1 [FAT] 31 MB < 26MB free>
C: Partition2 [NTFS] 38131 MB < 28439 MB free>
Unpartitioned space 8 MB

Given that info (all the affected machines I have seen have been the same w/ that un-named (-:partition1) there, though different sizes listed on each, but all w/ 5-6 MB's used and the rest of that Partition1 free), I'd have to say it's a boot sector virus causing all the problems myself. Though I do remember on my dual boot system I deleted that partition and the very next boot I received a message that the NTBootLoader.dll wasn't present so I could no longer boot into my Win98SE side (D:\Drive) which before that I was able to do by just choosing it from the Dual Boot menu.

Any chance you can run a repair option then log on as Admin. and then choose DISKPART on any other affected machine to see if you have the same -: Partition1 on that machine and it's size and free space?

Do you happen to have a healthy single boot machine w/ XP Home around that you could check in the same way just to see if that is actually the NTBootLoader that appears as a Partition before C:\?

Sry to ask, but both of the healthy XP machines I have here in the house are dual boot machines (1 XP Home, 1 XP Pro). I just figure if we put our heads together and I don't do much to this current machine that is affected I may then be armed enough to make MS work on the problem w/ us. See I know that this machine was formatted in NTSF since I made no changes to the file system, but all the dual boot machines I do are in FAT 32 due to the addition of Win98SE or Win2K installed on the D:\Drive Partition.

I sure hope you can find the time to check this out as it very well may be the key to beginning to solve this. This is like machine #10 for me, getting tired of re-formatting them all and losing all the customers data, and 5 of those I never touched previous to the calls for this specific problem, so I know it isn't my original setup that is the problem.

Could you please post the results here and say if the machine was affected or healthy.
Click to expand...
 
Well, it makes total sense that it hangs after you see MUP.SYS and that means it is already loaded. It probably is directly related to video because I forgot to mention that a big symptom of infection with this crap is hosed video drivers.

In fact, lately it seems a lot of spyware is hosing video drivers. I have had a suspicion after fixing a rash of PCs with dead video cards that it may in fact be causing the video cards to overheat :eek: I am not saying this to start a "my video card is dead because of spyware" scare, it's just a suspicion. Spyware fucks up OS's left and right, and someone with an OC'd video card and no regular spyware detection seems to me like they would be extremely vulnerable.
 
blackrino9 said:
This guy had a very intersting theory, could you check and see what yours says?
Click to expand...

Sure. I haven't formatted the dead one yet, just turned it off (it's a laptop). Maybe I'll try some more things and see if I can fix it.

That is, until my Acer 1712smi arrives today from Newegg :woot: :woot:

I know the thing is huge, but you just have to love a laptop with a full sized 17 inch LCD and a go5700 :D
 
P.S. Blackrino, not to be a tard, but you are asking me to check the partitions, correct, and make certain it's not a bootsect issue? I'll check.

I'll post back with any findings if I don't get interrupted by the arrival of "the beast :) "
 
This topics been dead for a while, but I'll try and contribute to it as I have fallen to the mup.sys annoyance also. My comp will boot once in a while though. About the few megabytes free, I have that same scenario. I have an 8mb partition prior to where my Win XP installation is. It wont show up in Disk Management.

When I went to go check it out with a program called Boot It NG, I noticed my xp partition was an extended partition and was named "hewitt@n". I tried googlling it, but came up with nothing. It does seem very suspicious to me, and most probably will end up formatting, yet again. If anyone else that comes across this problem and has a name such as hewitt@n for the partition, well, I guess thats a start to finding a solution.
 
Alright, I deleted both partitions, formatted and cleared boot sector with boot it ng. I made sure their was no 7 or 8 mb partition of free space made. Hasn't screwed me up yet. Hope that takes care of it.
 
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