At 17:37 02/02/09, DHSinclair wrote:
Have what seems to be a small problem.
WXPproXP3......
Was an Upgrade from W2KproSP4.....
Otherwise works superb!
But,
Can Not boot to Safe Mode...........Hangs at "mup.sys".
Do have reading for this, but, am wondering if there may be something
else going on?
My network connection pointer in the CP is at #2.
In the past, I have found that #1 was never totally ripped
out............ :)
I do not recall how to fully erase net connections, if this is what is
going on...........
I have sat for 40+ minutes waiting, at the blue (Windows is Starting)
screen trying to do a Restore Install. Not yet.....
I really do NOT wish to erase/reformat my C: partition; UNLESS the
Collective convinces me this is the ONLY way. Hmmm.
Perhaps Windows CAN NOT really be Upgraded? Sure looks like it at the
moment.
This is NOT a call to Resurrect. I am not Down. WXP is fully running
(and I remain totally confused!)
If this is a "boot.ini" file trouble, I can read/correct. (?)
If this is a "mbr" partition error, I can read/correct. (?)
Where to start? Ideas? Suggestions? Opinions (except Vista) welcome?
Hi Duncan
You mentioned that you changed motherboards (presumably without doing a
clean reinstall of Windows 2K or XP). This is something that I've done
a few times while running one Win2k installation and I've run into a
problem similar to yours.
With XP running normally, check to see how large (the single file)
SYSTEM is. Problems like yours can occur if this file (no file
extension, its name is just "system", without the quotes of course)
gets too large. Why would it get too large? Because Windows XP and 2K
don't remove hardware information from the registry when you physically
remove hardware devices from your box. By the way, SYSTEM is usually in
the folder "C:\WINNT\system32\config" or "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config").
"SYSTEM" is the file that holds the part of the registry with all the
hardware information (past and present). If SYSTEM approaches 10 MB in
size (in Win2k, not sure the actual number in WinXP), Windows will not
boot fully because it doesn't allocate enough memory for all the files
needed in memory during the boot process for all the files that need to
go into memory during boot. It doesn't matter how much RAM you have,
it's just the way Microsoft handles things. I've lost the Microsoft
Knowledge Base article that described all this, or I'd give you a copy
or a URL for it.
So if SYSTEM gets near 10 MB, Windows will think the registry is
corrupt and will refuse to boot fully. You can shrink the size of
SYSTEM by using ADD-REMOVE HARDWARE in Control Panel (or wherever it is
in WinXP) to remove all "ghost" hardware. By ghost, I mean hardware
that was once in the system but has been physically removed from the
system but not from the registry. Windows "hides" this stuff in Device
Driver and ADD-REMOVE HARDWARE. It might take an hour or two to remove
all the hardware from previous motherboards, previously removed disk
drives, USB devices, etc. When my Windows periodically failed to boot,
I shrunk the SYSTEM file from 9.8 MB to 4.4 MB and the problem has
never returned.
I do recall that this problem occurs in both Win2k and WinXP. Maybe
it's not your problem...but why not just check the size of your SYSTEM
file and see if maybe it's too large.
When I had this problem, I found over a hundred "hidden" disc drives in
ADD-REMOVE HARDWARE, as well as dozens of hidden copies of every
hardware device that you'd normally see once in Device Manager or
ADD-REMOVE HARDWARE. If you deed to,
you can get a copy of the free "VERITAS Volume Manager 4.2" to remove
more stuff from SYSTEM due to old disc drives. Let me know.
Regards,
Bill
