Gaming Safe Mode hangs when booting

[DeltaBurnt]

Alright so I have 2 problems. One is that my 1 TB hard drive (which holds my 50 GB of steam crap) has shown to be at risk in the windows partition manager. So I was like, "Alright whatever, I'll just run a check disk and if things don't patch up I'll backup my important stuff and reformat". Problem is is that chkdisk is best run in safemode to keep it from being held up because something tries to access it. True enough, chkdisk just hangs at a certain point in chkdisk when running in XP normally.

So here comes the second problem, I try to go into ANY safe mode configuration (networking, normal, etc.) and it hangs on that list of files that boot. The last file it shows is mup.sys.

Apparently quite a few people have this problem, and it's just so happens that there's a least 10 different causes. The ones I'm most likely to have are:

Corruptions on C drive (had this computer since Christmas 2006, haven't reformatted C: once I was actually going to do that but then this problem occured)
Too many things sucking power from the power supply (laser mouse, blue LED backlit gaming keyboard, 3 HDDs in a computer meant for 2 HDDs one of which is 1 TB, and a graphics card that requires extra power from the power supply). So yah.
Virus, kind of unlikely though since I don't do many things that put me at risk for viruses and nothing else seems to be acting weird. I also have a virus scanner that has on access scanning, so it should catch a virus as soon as it tries anything funny.
Corrupted spots in the registry (again, I haven't formatted C: for awhile)

Also the possibility that I no longer have a floppy drive in my computer, and my BIOS was meant to detect this floppy drive. I replace my floppy drive with my 3rd HDD and covered the hole that it stuck out of. I even get a message everytime I boot up my BIOS prompting me that it couldn't find the floppy drive (even though it's out of my BIOS's god damn boot sequence).

The final problem is that maybe the power supply or other recently installed hardware is failing.

This is a shit load of stuff to test. I honestly have no idea where to begin, and this is obviously quite a big problem in case I get some sort of virus and need safe mode.

Has anyone else had this problem before, or does anyone have any suggestions? I suppose running a chkdsk on C: would help, but I don't know how without safe mode. I think I have my original XP installation disk, but I don't see any option in my boot menu to boot instructions from the disk.

 

[Originality]

The number of times I've seen mup.sys......... first thing I'll say - it's a 50-50 chance that it's not mup.sys itself, but the file that comes afterwards that's failing.

If it's low power, then the solution is quite easy - start unplugging things. Plug in only the C drive, a single stick of RAM, no GFX (if you have integrated, if not, keep it in), no DVD drive, etc. Just the very basics. If it still happens, then power is not the fault.

Strangely enough, I find that if I insert the Windows DVD or the Motherboard driver CD, it can sometimes bypass this problem long enough to do something about it. This worked on two of the comps I used, but there are many more that needed something else.

As you mentioned, it could be corruptions. Either corruptions in the registry, in the system files themselves, or more likely in the boot sector. Checkdisk is one of the things to try and fix these things, along with windows or dos based tools. My memory about them is very patchy but I remember it sometimes worked. To make things easier, you can just take the drive out and stick it in another comp (or use CD loaded Ubuntu) to check further.

Once, it turned out to be due to something going wrong in the motherboard. I bought an entire replacement system (thinking it was time to upgrade) only to find the problem fixed before I had to wipe the drive. Made me feel very silly, but at least I had a new system at that time. Likewise, once it turned out to be the CPU (because it happened on more than one drive with XP on it. That was annoying, but I happened to have a few extra laying around.

Btw, if you want to load from the XP disk, you should rearrange the boot order in BIOS to choose DVD first. If it still doesn't work, then something may be wrong with the disk itself (or maybe BIOS is just retarded - I've seen that happen a couple times too).

 

[DeltaBurnt]

Thanks!

That's quite a few things to worry about :\

I really don't have the money to completely buy a new mobo+case+other crap >.

 

[Originality]

Most of the time, it's due to nothing but the HDD, so you should start there. Checkdisk and boot sector recovery tools may just fix it. Otherwise, you may just have to reinstall windows. It could also be a sign of the HDD itself failing, which is easy enough to replace. HDDs usually die slowly, so if that's the case (check it with S.M.A.R.T when you get it running again), then it'll give you the time to backup your data before replacing it.