Windows XP reinstall, mup.sys and Service Packs 1 & 2
Due to the nightmare problems I’ve been having recently and the lack of information I could find on the web, this blog entry will hopefully help others avoid the mistakes I’ve made over the last few days.
Here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to:
1. Purchased broadband from NTL – man comes, installs cable, leaves modem and installation CD.
2. Run installation CD – fails. Try again – fails. Try again – installs, works for 15 minutes, reboot and now it won’t start.
3. Boot into Safe Mode, try System Restore. Fails. Thump furniture. Try everything else I can think of. Go to bed in a bad mood.
4. Reinstall Windows XP from CD. Works fine. Reinstall broadband. Works fine. Download Windows Update, including Service Pack 1. Restart after installing – again, won’t start.
5. Try to reinstall Windows again, but it chokes on copying across the installation files, specifically mup.sys. Clean CD. Still doesn’t work. Borrow a CD from a friend – makes no difference.
6. Finally realise that the reason it isn’t installing properly is that you have to run a full NTFS format – the “NTFS (Quick)” option obviously doesn’t do enough.
7. Reinstall Windows again. Reinstall broadband. Try Windows Update again – this time, it gives me a totally different set of updates (?) and Service Pack 2. Restart after installing – it starts, but takes about 10 minutes to get to the login screen.
I’ve found a few references to slow-downs after installing SP2, usually to do with drivers on existing software (which obviously can’t be my problem, as I’ve just done a clean install). I’ll keep looking – a slow startup isn’t a massive problem, it just means you have time to make a cup of tea while your system starts – but if it gets worse I guess I’ll just have to reinstall again and not bother with Windows Update, as that seems to be the source of the problem.
At least I have all my work and documents archived on CD – unfortunately, I forgot to save my Vice City and Tony Hawks savegames before I wiped the hard-drive…
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Comments
- Stuart
- 2165 days ago
- Oh dear. I know the frustration this kind of crap can cause. I’ve heard one or two bad things about SP2 so I won’t be bothering with it. I’m on a dial-up anyway and had enough problems with the size of SP1. From the security point-of-view I don’t use IE or OE and I’m covered by a firewall, anti-virus (including email) and a couple of gizmos that block access to my registry so they can forget it.
- #1
- matthew
- 2160 days ago
- Man what a bummer. I have SP2 installed on my XP Pro (is yours Home or Pro?) machine and it’s all good.
Normally after a fresh install the hard drive will be heavily fragmented, have you run a defrag? I use diskeeper.
Download the network install of SP2:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en
And use this app to slipstream it with a full intsall cd:
http://nuhi.msfn.org/
That way you have a ready to go Win XP SP2 install cd!
More info here:
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html
Good luck. - #2
- Matthew Pennell
- 2160 days ago
- Cheers, matthew – I updated my drivers last night (via Drivers HQ – a great little site that scans your machine and finds drivers that need updating).
- #4
- Jerome Koch
- 2006 days ago
- I know this post is a little dated, but I thought I would give my 2 cents worth anyway. For future reference here are some tips.
1) Usually slow logins are attributed to device drivers-esp if you did a clean install. I always download the most up to date drivers before making a clean install. After I download them I burn to a cd or an external hard drive. Make sure you have the latest chipset/motherboard drivers. If you have a non whitebox (Dell, HP they are usually easy to find. Once you have a clean OS, purchase ghost,and image your workstation to an external Hard drive.
2)SP2 is very large, I ordered it on CD. Made sure I had a good ghost images available before installed it. Sp2 has the built in firewall. I usually turn this off since I have a broadband firewall/virus protection I am happy with. I also turn on off the “go back” feature of XP since I already have ghost. This saves disk space and processing. OFr security I also turn off the remote desktop features.
I hope this helps.
PS You can purchase Symantec ghost 9.0 and a 100gb usb hard drive for about 200 dollars. It is well worth the money. There are other imaging softwares on the market, ghost is what Im most familiar with. - #5
- Gemma
- 1843 days ago
- heya, I have a question!
My friend wants me to format her computer and install windows xp on it (she currently has windows 98) and i’m fine doing that no problem. But there’s one thing i’m a little worried about – she has freeserve broadband. I’m assuming that when I format the computer it will format the software for freeserve. Therefore when XP is put on, can I just reinstall freeserve like a normal program? And then it’ll work fine? Or is there anything else I need to do? Please reply xxx - #6
- Matthew Pennell
- 1843 days ago
- Gemma: I would assume that would be the case, as I was able to reformat and reinstall Windows and then the broadband software multiple times.
As long as your friend still has the CD and all the relevant information (username, account number, password, etc.) I don’t think you’ll have any problems. - #7
- Richard
- 1782 days ago
- Was hung at Mup.sys, left the comp overnight, when I got back to it in the morning, I was booted up. All fine since, can restart system no probs. Go figure.
- #8
- Amir
- 1487 days ago
- what is mup.sys and how it works??
- #9
- Matthew Pennell
- 1487 days ago
- No idea, Amir, but Google seems to indicate that it causes problems for plenty of people!
- #10
- Josh
- 1451 days ago
- I’ve had a prob copying cds on my pc….ended up crashing after writing a photo cd with NERO and loops at startup….tried everthing but int the end had to reinstall windows…pain in the ass….installed all my programs and files as luckily i had them all on external hard drive….tried writing to cd with windows, and guess what…it crashes and hangs at MUP.SYS when trying to start in safe mode!!!!! i am angry!! any ideas
- #11
