Preventive Maintenance

Good Evening,

I recently reinstalled Windows onto my computer because I couldn't find an answer to the problem I was having (Thank God for backups!). I'd like to find an answer so this doesn't happen again, so any help is appreciated.

I used to use Windows XP Media Edition, but now am using Windows XP Home. When I was using ME, I was surfing the internet and the computer randomly white-screened. As this sometimes happens for no apparent reason, I manually shut it down and restarted it.

When it started, it asked me how I wanted to restart (Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, LKGC, or a normal Start).
> The normal Start and LKGC resulted in the Windows logo appearing, the computer tried to start, and ended up restarting and went back to the screen that asked me how I wanted to restart.
> The Safe mode options scrolled down the list of Drivers it was starting and froze up at the same one each time:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partitions(2)\WINDOWS\system32\Drivers\Mup.sys
After freezing up here, it would automatically restart.

Once before this happened (everything described above), and during that time I started Windows with the boot CD and replaced the corrupted driver with a new one and everything was fine. This time however it was a little different. When I tried repairing I couldn't do anything in the command prompt. It didn't automatically prompt for login information, and it wouldn't let me log in with the "longon" command; it paused for a moment then entered a new line "C:>" for me to type in, without a prompt for username or password etc. I tried and was unable to get into any files.

I'm not sure what the cause of the problem is, but I would like to find out if it's something that I need to worry about in the future. Is there anyone who might be able to help me out?

 

Firstly, I must say, I have never heard anything good about Windows Media Center Edition. Secondly, go to Start, right click on My Computer, choose properties, go to the Advanced tab, under startup and recovery click on Settings, under System failure make sure there IS a checkmark next to Write an event to the system log, and IS NOT a checkmark next to Automatically restart. If their is an error code you may then have time to read it. This gave me fits on the kids laptop when the hard drive went. Had to go into BIOS to figure out the problem. If you can log on, go to Start, Run, type in eventvwr.msc . This is where your Application and System Error Records are kept along with Security Audit Records. Click on any one in the left pane and it will open the logs in the right pane. What is usually of interest are the error logs. Double click on one and it will open another window showing Event Properties.
There will be a link to Microsoft, click it and send it to open up Help and Support with links to areas that may help resolve, or at least explain the issue. I must add that you will be sending information to Microsoft about your computer via the internet. Applications are also available to decipher memory dumps, although that subject is way over my head. All the best.
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