Windows doesnt boot beyond mup.sys

[Krynn72]

Problems after problems after problems. Ok, so after I got my new hardware installed, figured out why my monitor wasnt working, did a zero fill reformat to fix all these blue screens I got after doing a regular format, I got the thing running smoothe as a babies arse.


For two days.


Now I have a new problem. Its not really new though, since I have seen it before, and it seems to be a pretty common problem. What happened was I came home from work yesterday, and was like "hmmm, I think I will play some Rome: Total War." So I turn on my computer, and boot up the game. I was going to load my last game but then I decided I would start a campaign as the Scipii or whatever. So I did, and started watching the CG movie, and was all pumped up during the guy's speach on how we are going to rule everyone. Then when it seemed his speach was about to end, it sounded like he was about to say "And then we will be worthy of the god's love, and worth of Rome!!!". But it came out like this. "And then we will be worth of the god's love, and worthy of Romagrgagegrgarsdk." Blue screen flashed, computer reboots. I just sit there for a couple seconds looking blankly at the screen. My adrenaline vaporised, then all the sudden comes back, and I start cursing out the damnned machine at the top of my lungs.

Now the computer will not boot all the way into windows. It gets to the point where it says "Windows did not start properly blablabla" Then give the option to start in safe mode (with or without networking and that other option), to boot with "last known good configuration", or boot normally. If I do normal, it just locks up right there, at the same screen and I have to manually restart. If I do last know good configuration, it just restarts itself. If I do safe mode I see that it loads mup.sys, and then locks up there. I tried recovery console, and did chkdsk in there, it said it found a problem, but it didnt do anything. I tried switching out ide cables, since I was using an old one, no dice. I will try doing another installation of windows off the cd when I get home, but I had this problem before I did the zero fill format, and a new windows installation didnt help.

Man, I though for sure that the zero fill format would fix this. And I wish I could have seen what that blue screen said before it went away. I remember that before the zero fill, it used to have another error that mentioned that my motherboard doesnt support acsi or something like that, I dont recall exactly what it said though. Could it be my motherboard is messed up? Maybe I need a new bios? But why would it work great for 2 days if that was the case? And how would I install a new bios without being able to get into windows?

sorry for long post, and for the fact that I asked a bajillion questions, I just want to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

 

[furiousV]

Here third one down.

Basically what you wil probably want to do is go into the Recovery Console and copy over update.sys
To be safe also get mup.sys

Another possible solution:
Recovery Console:
type "disable mup" and maybe it will work

A possible cause to the problem here.

Another possible cause to the problem here.

You are running Windows XP right?

I hope you find this useful.

 

[Krynn72]

Ok, well I got back into windows by reinstalling the OS and the drivers for my motherboard. Then I tried to see if Rome: Total War would work. It doesnt, it just freezes my computer at the splash screen. So I deleted it, reinstalled it and got no results. I was like "hmm. maybe its not just RTW" so I tried half life 2. I was able to get in and play for awhile, but then when I shot one of those alien things with tounges that pull you up... I got a blue screen that said some stuff. I started writing it down but then it went away before I could get the last line.

It said a bunch of usless stuff like "remove hardware or software just installed bla bla bla" and then to turn off bios features like caching or shadowing. At the top of the screen it said " Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" and below it gave a STOP: code. (I can write out the whole thing, I was able to get all that down.)

So I typed in the irql stuff in google and found a forum that mentioned a bios update. I was thinking that for awhile (I even mentioned it in my last post). So I went to Chaintechs site, and downloaded the utility and the .bin bios file. So now I guess I need to make a bootable disk to get dos and then flash the bios and update it. Great.... I HAVE NO FLOPPY DRIVE!!!

So is it possible to make a bootable CD that can do the same thing? Thanks.

 

[furiousV]

Try a flash drive

My flash drive came in two partitons: one as 1.44MB and is picked up by Windows as A: Floppy Drive and the last 510MB as removeable storage.

Try what I got and see if it works

 

[Krynn72]

Hmm. I have a flash drive, but it doesnt seem to have two partitions like that. Its just showing up as 128mb removeable storage.

 

[furiousV]

Try reformatting it yourself, using a 1.44MB partition and the rest for another. Windows should be fooled into thinking you have a floppy drive then and will show up as A:

The reason my flash drive came like that was so I could have thed encryption software on the floppy partition and the other 500MB encrypted

 

[Krynn72]

I couldnt do that with my flash drive. But I think I did find out wtf is causing all this. I think my ram was doing it. I have 1gb of pc266, a 512 stick and two 256 sticks. When once again I ran into this problem (not being able to load past mup.sys) I decided I would try and take out the two 256 sticks. Then it loaded right up with no problem. Also, in a few of those blue screens I have been getting, it would say "dumping physical memory to disk". Thats actually what made me decide to take out some ram. Now, I think it might not be the actuall ram, but rather how the motherboard takes it. I have 4 slots for ram, two are colored black, two blue. I had one of my 256s in a blue slot. Is that for like dual channel or something? Maybe I should just buy a stick of like 1gb ram and put it in, or maybe just another 512 ddr 266.

 

[ComradeBadger]

You'll want another 1gb stick.. 256 256 512 1024 isn't a good RAM configuration :|

 

[Krynn72]

Actually since I posted that I have gone to newegg. Im thinking about ordering two of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145440

Would this work in my mobo? I want to be absolutely sure before I buy it and find out that I wasted moneyz on ram I cant use. The mother board is the Chaintech Zenith VE VNF4 Ultra. It says it supports
* Four 184-pin DDR DIMMs up to 4GB
* Supports Dual Channel DDR266/333/400 memory

So if I buy these, all I have to do is just fill up the slots with the 512 sticks, since they would all be dual channel, ddr400 512mb sticks. Right?

And just to show you how I had it before, look at this pic. I had The 512 stick in the first slot from the left, then a 256 stick in the other black slot to the right of it, and then another 256 in the first blue one from the left. At first I thought maybe I should have had both 256s in the blue slots, but then I thought that it shouldnt matter since they arnt dual channel.

EDIT: Oh, and I was looking at my mobo manual, and it says "Due to CPU specifications limitation. two DDR400 memory module inserted into DIMM1/3, three DDR400 into DIMM1/2/3, or four DDR400 into DIMM1/2/3/4 is not recommended."

What does that mean? I cant use four DDR400 modules?

 

[furiousV]

Best use two 512MB DDR400 in slots 2/4 then

If you have to use all modules at DDR400 try running them at DDR333 speeds

 

[Krynn72]

Hmm, Well I got my hopes up for 2gbs now lol. I guess if I cant use 4 512s in dual channel, I guess Ill just get two 1gb sticks hehehe. Well thanks guys for the responses. After all this it turned out to be the ram, but I did learn all the things to check for when this happens next time. And everyone knows there is ALWAYS a next time for computer problems . So thanks.