HELP!!! Computer will not boot into Windows!

[MS]

When you booted the recovery console did you try chkdsk (I think chkdsk
/f) to fix disk errors.
Neil

Yes, I did. And it reported errors, that it could not fix. (I don't remember
the exact message. It didn't try to fix the errors, but just stopped with
the error message.) (Interestingly, if I run chkdsk from the recovery
console without any flags,it reports no errors. But if I run it with the
flags, it reports errors that it cannot fix.)

Yet, if I run chkdsk from safe mode, including with /f and /r flags, no
errors are reported.

 

[MS]

IIRC, you used both System Restore and ERUNT at various points in this
juncture, so it's getting a bit confusing to me as what to suggest. But I
may be misremembering this.

Yes, I used both of those. Both very similar, actually. ERUNT only restores
the registry, SR restores registry and some files. The reason I used ERUNT
later, was that by then I had lost all my SR points due to trying the
diagnostic startup from msconfig.

That rules out a registry problem. So--where else to look, that I have not
done yet?

 

[MS]

Thank you, PABear.

Yes, I have HijackThis, and know how to use it.

I doubt a virus or spyware is the cause of the problem though.

That is a good idea, to contact MS tech support, that gives free support for
SP3. I kind of doubt they would give better support than members of this
forum could, and I would probably be waiting on the phone for hours, to
speak to someone overseas who has me go through all the same steps I already
have done.

But if nothing else works, I guess I should try that.

 

[MS]

I discovered something else.

I managed once to attempt to boot in regular mode, without the auto-restart.
I had also put the flag in boot.ini to show all the drivers as they load.

The last one on the screen, when it froze, was called mup.sys.

I put that in Google, and that is apparently a common problem, for a
computer to freeze at boot right after displaying mup.sys. The consensus
seemed to be however, that it is not the file mup.sys itself that causes the
problem, and there seem to be many possible explanations for why a computer
can freeze right after loading mup.sys.

So, still no clear resolution. If someone here knows anything about mup.sys
boot failures, please help to clarify what I can try. Thank you.

 

[MS]

PS--my original XP disk is SP1, and I now have SP3 running. I don't know if
that perhaps could cause a problem with running chkdsk from that CD, or
other recovery console problems.

 

[MS]

Fixboot command from the recovery module? If no go, Fixmbr?

George

I guess you missed the post where I did both of those commands already.
First fixmbr, followed by fixboot.

Didn't help.

In fact, later I tried it a second time. Still didn't help.

Thanks for the suggeston anyhow.