XP will not boot, safemode options stall !

[Guest]

I have noticed in the past couple of weeks that my XP Professional system and
many friends XP Pro systems are hanging on startup. I have tried safemode
and each system hangs on a different driver. For example one system hung on
\Windows\AppPatch\drvmain.sdb and another hung on
\Windows\system32\drivers\mup.sys.

I have also tried all other safemode options, including Last Known Good
Configuration which only worked on one system.

All systems are up to date with Windows critical updates but no service
packs are installed. All machines are also running Norton AV 2003 with up to
date definitions.


I think that a recent Microsoft patch or malware of some kind may be causing
this as I fix it by reinstalling XP over itself, or by putting its last good
image back on using Norton Ghost and then make sure I can reboot, but then in
a day or two the same problem arises again.

Has anyone else had similar problems ?
Any ideas?

Thanks in advance
Shoshin

 

[Guest]

I have already tried all available malware scanners, if it is an exploit it
must be a 0-day that infects the instructions on hardware chips which is
possible but unlikely
Thanks anyways.

 

[Guest]

On one stubborn system that will not stay running, I think it is a
motherboard problem as I swapped the RAM with a known working stick which did
not solve the problem, so I then tried removing the Soundblaster Live
soundcard and then it booted up, so I enabled the onboard sound and it hung
on next reboot, so I disabled onboard sound and installed the soundcard again
in the same slot and it booted up, then it ran for a while but on next reboot
it hung again, so I moved the soundcard to another PCI slot and it booted up,
but later that week it hung on bootup again.
This makes me think that the AOpen AK73 Pro(A) motherboard is faulty.
Any agreements or other ideas ?