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[DeadlyAvenger]

Ok - trying to fix my housemates computer.

Ran memtest & booted into an Ubuntu CD and the drive appears ok.

When switched on - you get the XP Start in safe mode screen etc. Doesnt matter which option you press - but at some point early on during the XP loading bar screen the computer bluescreens (too quickly to see what the message is) and restarts. When trying to load up in safe mode - it loads up and then the pc restarts just after it's loaded mup.sys

Guessing it's a corrupted file - how do I:
a) find out which one
b) fix it

I have an oem XP cd - but when I put it in it doesn't give me option of the recovery console.

[CruelCow]

Enter the installation progress of XP CD. Before chosing your partitions it should detect the old installation and offer to repair it, which replaces all system files.

Of course yadeyadeya backup everything before trying.

[Finaldeath]

mup.sys has loaded. After that, from memory, it is plug and play stuff, loading graphics drivers etc. - it's hard to pin down, since it only says what it sucessfully loads.

It should give a blue screen error which might help though. F8 and "Disable automatic restart" should always work.

First: Remove everything apart from the hard drive/graphics card and monitor cable, boot to XP and see what happens...no doubt it'll still do it!

Second: You have after that a few options - easiest might be the UBCD - has chkdsk and hard drive scanning tools (and memtest) - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ - well worth running the full chkdsk and some other bits on there.

Third: UBCD4Win is a PE environment which is pretty nifty. Actually any PE environment would allow you to get files off (which is the important bit for backing up for before a reinstall...). Any XP disk to create the PE environment would do for this mind you. In fact, the Vista or Windows 7 disk has recovery options that are basically minimal PE environments - but I don't think they boot if they only detect XP, sadly.

Fourth: If you can find the old XP version of ERD commander (v5.0 I think) from..."somewhere"...that's a Microsoft version which also allows some recovery via. system restore (if it is on), and otherwise acts like a PE environment. Has a good way to disable specific drivers and startup items which might be helpful. XP and system restore is pretty crap though, thus the low down option (hanging fruit above with chkdsk and PE environments is better!).

Finally: Reinstall, any further and you're into the realm of "Not worth it, mate" and the time spent hoping to recover (if it ISN'T fixable by checkdisk, hard drive scans and finally system restore and PE meddling) is going to wholly outweigh the time spent reinstalling programs! (as long as you've got the data off that is).

[discordance]

Enter the installation progress of XP CD. Before chosing your partitions it should detect the old installation and offer to repair it, which replaces all system files.

Of course yadeyadeya backup everything before trying.

This, my current XP installation is 5 years old with numerous instances of running a repair install. Its the lazy mans way but its not your pc and itll get it running again. Although sometimes fixing the one missing file is fun, the other month my friends explorer.exe had died due to a dead dll, but it turns out task manager is able to browse usb drives and copy over missing system files, that was fun.

[r007]

Also, If you can scrape off the minidumps from Windows\Minidump\*.dmp using a boot disk, you can use another computer with the debugging tools to find out what is buggered. Then use ERD commander to switch it off and/or repair it. At least that's what I always do.

[egg]

Also, If you can scrape off the minidumps from Windows\Minidump\*.dmp using a boot disk, you can use another computer with the debugging tools to find out what is buggered. Then use ERD commander to switch it off and/or repair it. At least that's what I always do.

This if you want to 'fix it', otherwise its just as quick to rebuild tbh

[Zarf]

aye, back up his docs using your Ubuntu live CD and start fresh is the most effective use of your time.
Usually it's easiest to just grab the whole c:\documents and Settings folder. Check the game install dirs for save games too if he cares about them.

[DeadlyAvenger]

Enter the installation progress of XP CD. Before chosing your partitions it should detect the old installation and offer to repair it, which replaces all system files.

Of course yadeyadeya backup everything before trying.

This, my current XP installation is 5 years old with numerous instances of running a repair install. Its the lazy mans way but its not your pc and itll get it running again. Although sometimes fixing the one missing file is fun, the other month my friends explorer.exe had died due to a dead dll, but it turns out task manager is able to browse usb drives and copy over missing system files, that was fun.

As the CD is an OEM XP CD is doesn't give you the option to repair it anywhere. It detects the partition but it doesn't give you the repair option.

[Nineblade]

Gonk had the exact same problem a few weeks back. Twas ok after he reseated his RAM

[discordance]

Enter the installation progress of XP CD. Before chosing your partitions it should detect the old installation and offer to repair it, which replaces all system files.

Of course yadeyadeya backup everything before trying.

This, my current XP installation is 5 years old with numerous instances of running a repair install. Its the lazy mans way but its not your pc and itll get it running again. Although sometimes fixing the one missing file is fun, the other month my friends explorer.exe had died due to a dead dll, but it turns out task manager is able to browse usb drives and copy over missing system files, that was fun.

As the CD is an OEM XP CD is doesn't give you the option to repair it anywhere. It detects the partition but it doesn't give you the repair option.

The partition or the folder, when it detects the partition non OEM, would ask about recovery console, when it detects a previous installation folder later though is when it would ask if you want to press r to repair.

[DeadlyAvenger]

The partition or the folder, when it detects the partition non OEM, would ask about recovery console, when it detects a previous installation folder later though is when it would ask if you want to press r to repair.

It doesn't. I mean it's an OEM XP install CD (not the OEM partition) which doesn't have the repair feature on it. When you select the partition it starts installing windows.

[discordance]

find a better XP CD? you can probably download them from MS? maybe

[Finaldeath]

You need the exact version of the XP CD to repair it anyway (ie; oem for oem etc.), unlike Vista.

We can safely assume you've done check disk and other things like I said then? I mean, most file system errors are picked up by this, or by the ERD commander's system file checker (sfc /scannow for you vista users).

[DeadlyAvenger]

He couldn't be bothered anymore so I did a full reinstall. Cheers for the tips guys.

He reckons it broke after a windows update...

[Finaldeath]

I've seen things break on windows updates...after a fresh reinstall (and some programs)...yeah, windows is a bitch to debug. Easier to reinstall...sigh.

Glad he was happy to reinstall, it's honestly a good thing to know they're not bothered at least!