Win XP Pro: boot fails after loading mup.sys

guys I have pretty good tech skills but this one has me beat for the moment.
This is an IBM Intellistation Pro M with 2gb ram 3.6ghz intel proc, Win XP Pro SP3, nvidia Quatro vid card, 74gb SCSI drive.
I configured the sys in the lab and it was perfect - good performance, lean/mean everyone behaving. Had it well-protected.

a few days after putting it into real service I got wind of a problem.
Went to check it and add 2GB more ram.

My observation was that it acted as though there were conflicts on the system bus or something that radically slowed everything to a crawl. no viruses or malware [had not even been on the 'net much at all]. What it did have was a bunch of old USB deviced plugged in that I did not authorize or check. I am not sure these were a problem but at least one such device had no valid driver loaded and Win XP would try each time to actually install the device. At any rate, the performance deteriorated while I was working with it, and in particular the Nvidia "wizard" used to setup dual monitors was failing. [two vga mons attached via adapters to the twin DVI ports of the Nvidia Quadro]. I could not get it stabilized so I removed the entire Nvidia software ball. Powered off the system, unplugged everything to take to the lab.

At the lab, it would not boot. it gets to the point of loading Ndis.sys, then mup.sys, then it bails with a bluescreen with error codes. This, at least, is consistent every time.

I doubt it is related, but at the same time [this morning] the CD/burner/DVD failed. It will read a disc about once in 20 tries. I have a replacement on the way.

Any clue how to repair the Win XP install without nuking it? I can try recovery console but not sure exactly what to delete or replace??? how to figure that out?

thx
zapp

 

I don't think mup.sys has anything to do with it. during safe mode boot, that's the last one that always shows up before going to the xp loading screen. have you tried to boot without the added 2gb of ram? and also, if your dvd drive is acting up, disconnect it.

could be a faulty PSU or under powered.
Run Driver Sweeper to remove all the nvidia graphics drivers
http://majorgeeks.com/Driver_Sweeper_d6171.html

Run the program, reboot, run it again (just to be safe) and reboot, and reinstall the drivers (if the blue screen goes away)

You can also use the repair console, use the command chkdsk /p

 

great idea if Win xp pro would boot.
it does not [back to original message].

complicating matters :
1. IBM's Restore disc has no option to run a normal windows xp repair, either R or other. its all or nothing
2. using a generic Windows XP Pro disc, because [apparently] the system uses an onboard adaptec scsi controller with a single 74gb scsi drive, windows xp does not detect any hard drives, so bails out of the setup process. "no drive found".

i'm a bit perplexed at the moment

 

there's an option during xp's install boot to use a 3rd party driver, from a floppy.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859

If there's no floppy, then you can try to slip stream the driver onto the setup disk.
you might have to search around the net to get the specifics. I've slip-streamed service pack 2 and 3 but I've never done a sata or scsi driver.

 

Try to limit the power being sucked from the PSU; remove all but 1 stick (or a pair of) RAM, disconnect any optical/tape drives and try booting again.

 

we're running astray here. i need to post this differently.

but... i was just informed that people who have technical businesses aren't welcome here, so....

but thank u for your help. It seems now [like babysteps] that Microsoft's Win XP Pro setup disc [install, recovery, etc] cannot deal with SCSI devices. Even though the drive is there and working away, the MS routine cannot find/see/recognize, so it bails out, because "there is no hard drive".
So I checked IBM tech support on this and at 2nd level, the word is/was that one has to use a FLOPPY! [eek] to intervene in the MS load process with a small executable that makes it recognize the SCSI device [whether adapter, bios, or end device I'm not real sure... and a tad mistrustful of the code].

I think I'll go elsewhere and post this peculiarity... surely there is some way to get a recovery console on that hard drive, and access it successfully

edit: for those that may come across this searching, this article indirectly refers to the SCSI issue, and seems to provide a suggestion: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595

 

I think my last post explained this.

and you are welcome to post any questions you may have, but the malware forum and suggested steps (which do tell the a person to run on each user account ) are intended for a home user who would like to try and fix their computer on their own.

 

hopefully other poor souls will be luckier than I.
first IBM pointed me to a file [to extract onto floppy the necessary .sys, .inf, etc files] that is not for this system.... but at least it succeeded in laying the files out so Winxp could read them... then fail.
so they directed me to another ... "guaranteed" to be correct. this one was a floppy-imaging work from 2004... it spins the intended floppy, makes a lot of noise, then exits, leaving the floppy free of any data :cry

 

yep. if ram were ill or incompatible you would not even get the first splash display.. just beeps. it runs fine... til windows hits the registry