I had this same problem… unfortunately what I'm about to say will not
make you feel warm and fuzzy
I recently did a few hardware upgrade(s) (power supply, graphics card,
memory and CPU fan) keep in mind the system was running fine before
this upgrade… after putting it all back together I went to boot the
machine and got the screen that said window was not shutdown properly
and had the options of, start normally, last known good config., safe
mode, yada - yada - yada… I'm sure you have seen it. I didn't think
much of it and just selected start normally, the system just hung. I
did a reboot, tried safe mode and it hung… btw, it appears to hang on
Mup.sys just because that is the last file it loads, but doesn't have
anything to do with the hanging. So, I decided to try a repair from
the xp disk. When I booted from the disk everything appeared to be
working fine, but after it copied all the initial files to memory and
tried to start the utility it hung! Now I was getting really nervous.
I decided to put the system back the way it was, same problem. I
thought it was my hard drive… went out and bought a new one, same
problem. I tried another graphics card, same problem. At this point I
knew it was either my processor or motherboard. I got both just in
case, but felt it was probably the mobo, so I decided to replace it
first… and that worked!
My conclusion, this is defiantly a hardware issue. When changing the
hardware I must have fried some controller (my guess it was the IDE
for the hard drive since I had no activity on the light or sounds
coming directly from the drive)… I guess it could have been worse; I
could have lost a bunch of data. When it happened I read a lot of post
about the same problem and a lot of people were saying "just disable
mup.sys" and other software related fixes… I wouldn't suggest any of
it, look towards hardware. Btw, it was the exact same mobo, so I did
not have to reload anything in the OS. Later…
Scott
My system if you're curious:
Win XP Pro
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (with Zalman CPU Cooler - this thing is AWESOME
http://www.zalman.co.kr/english/product/cnps7000a-cu.htm)
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
1 GB PC3200 DDR400 (dual channel)
WD 80 GB 7200 HD
480 watt Thermaltake Power Supply
MSI G4 TI 4600
Asus CD-RW 52x
Pioneer A05 DVD-RW
Thernaltake XaserIII case