Old hardware, XP "blew up"

I recently paid to have my old 1991 Northgate OmniKey 101 refurbished, and today I got it back. Haven't used it in 7-8 years, since my Windows 98 days. The DIP switches are still set to emulate an AT keyboard.

As soon as I attempted to start XP, it failed. Upon reboot, I chose "safe mode ". It started listing files as they were loading, and when it reached \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\mup.sys, the computer hesitated, and then rebooted.

I know this is possible. AFAIK the "reboot" routine is still burned in to modern BIOSes. But I don't know what is causing it.

If I choose "safe mode with command line" the same thing happens. If I try "boot logging ", I also get the same result (In my experience, Windows 3.1, 98 and XP don't actually create the file bootlog.txt most of the time).

The only file created is C:\WINDOWS\bootstat.dat, which is not a text file (so it won't help me).

Even if I put the generic PS/2 "mushy" keyboard back in, XP continues to fail to start.

My system:

ABIT KV7-V (KT600 chipset)
Athlon 2900 (they do exist, and were sold by TigerDirect)
1 GB Kingston RAM (400 MHz, 2 pieces of 512 MB each)
everything running at STOCK speeds
350 W PSU from PC Power and Cooling

160 GB Seagate EIDE, dual booting XP SP2 and Mandriva 2008.0

I have tried replacing the mup.sys from a copy of XP Pro (same date, same file size). I put the hard drive in another XP box, and defragged it. If there were problems, I believe Disk Defragmenter would have aborted, and told me to run scandisk first.

Where do I find out about Windows startup? Every time I get a kernel panic in linux (which is very, very, very rarely), I know right where to look to find the logs. But Windows startup is a mystery to me.

Any suggestions?

(BTW, if needed, I can FORCIBLY mount the "dirty" volume [EDIT: in linux] with full read/write permissions and change INI settings. I've made registry changes before [98, 2000 and XP], but doing so from another machine might be beyond my skills.)

I don't want to back up the partition, install fresh XP (and whatever else) on it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Got it fixed

Hi all,

Okay, got it fixed. I googled the file name. Over at hardwareanalysis.com, much advice and many hints are given for this problem.

Some say the problem was mup.sys, others say the problem is the thing that loads after mup.sys.

One person said that resetting the ESCD data (load BIOS defaults) forces Windows and ACPI to reset hardware IRQ allocation. I suspect this was correct, since resetting the BIOS fixed it.

If anyone wants the "clicky" keyboard, a company called Unicomp still makes them, on the same equipment IBM used, probably in the same plant, 90 miles down the highway from me in Lexington.

It really is a treat. Thanks!!!

 

Just for future reference, the XP bootlog is located at C:\Windows\ntbootlog.txt

Glad you got it sorted, and thanks for the followup.

Oh, welcome to WindowsBBS saturndude!

 

Ahhh...I see you have the problem resolved while I was typing this. I'll leave it as-is anyway.


Hi, saturndude. Welcome to Windows BBS!

Since you apparently cannot event boot into safe mode (or even a command prompt), I suspect the BIOS might be the culprit.

What BIOS version are you running?

• ABIT BIOS downloads for Socket A model KV7-V mobo

Have you checked the BIOS for proper settings such as Plug & Play OS, appropriate voltage settings, memory timings, etc.?

BTW, in Windows XP, if the /BOOTLOG switch is enabled in the BOOT.INI file, that should create a ntbtlog.txt in the Windows folder.