Install wierdness

[Christoph]

A friend of mine calls me up and asks if I can help him out with his PC.
Everything was working fine but now all of the sudden, upon rebooting his
PC, it halts mid-boot. So I get over there to see what might be going on,
boot into safe mode and see that everything stops running after "Mup.sys".
I've had this problem myself in the past. When I researched into it, I
found that it could be one of any number of problems. What I've done in the
past is simply re-install Windows.

The boot order for the machine is Floppy -> CD -> Hard drive. So I put the
XP disk, reboot and see a message asking if I want to boot from the disk.
Yes, this is mundane info but it's important later. I indicate that I do
and the Windows install process starts up. It goes through the loading of
all the drivers and then displays a message at the bottom of the screen
saying something like 'Setup is starting Windows'. And then it just hangs
there. I let it sit for about 5 or 6 minutes to see if it's just slow
(though, I know it shouldn't take that long) but it's still stuck.

So, if I boot the machine normally, it hangs after loading Mup.sys. If I
try to go through the XP install, it hangs when starting Windows after
loading all the drivers. I know there was supposed to be some sort of virus
running around yesterday so I put in my Norton Systemworks disk so it can
run a virus scan. I reboot the PC expecting it to boot from the CD. It
normally does when I leave it in the drive and I rebooted my PCs in the
past. However, it totally bypasses the CD and goes to boot off the HD.

So I'm not sure what to do here. I can't boot normally and I can't even
start the install process so I'm basically stuck. Could this problem be
related to the virus that was supposed to go around yesterday? Is there
something I can do to get past this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Jim Henley]

Christoph pretended :

A friend of mine calls me up and asks if I can help him out with his PC.
Everything was working fine but now all of the sudden, upon rebooting his PC,
it halts mid-boot. So I get over there to see what might be going on, boot
into safe mode and see that everything stops running after "Mup.sys". I've
had this problem myself in the past. When I researched into it, I found that
it could be one of any number of problems. What I've done in the past is
simply re-install Windows.

The boot order for the machine is Floppy -> CD -> Hard drive. So I put the
XP disk, reboot and see a message asking if I want to boot from the disk.
Yes, this is mundane info but it's important later. I indicate that I do
and the Windows install process starts up. It goes through the loading of
all the drivers and then displays a message at the bottom of the screen
saying something like 'Setup is starting Windows'. And then it just hangs
there. I let it sit for about 5 or 6 minutes to see if it's just slow
(though, I know it shouldn't take that long) but it's still stuck.

So, if I boot the machine normally, it hangs after loading Mup.sys. If I try
to go through the XP install, it hangs when starting Windows after loading
all the drivers. I know there was supposed to be some sort of virus running
around yesterday so I put in my Norton Systemworks disk so it can run a virus
scan. I reboot the PC expecting it to boot from the CD. It normally does
when I leave it in the drive and I rebooted my PCs in the past. However, it
totally bypasses the CD and goes to boot off the HD.

So I'm not sure what to do here. I can't boot normally and I can't even
start the install process so I'm basically stuck. Could this problem be
related to the virus that was supposed to go around yesterday? Is there
something I can do to get past this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

thnx,
Christoph

Not sure about any virus that would cause your problem but you can go
to the bios settings and change the boot order to "only" let it boot
from the CD or at least make sure the CD is first (you would need to
change back to CD, HD order during the install re-boot if it waw only
CD). You should then be able to start a re-build but if you have a deep
virus you should just go ahead, bite the bullet, and reformat.
Otherwise if you can come up in the Safe mode you could try a restore
first.

Hope this helps.