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  1. Maybe someone can help me with this problem, I hope.

    Here's what's up:
    When this whole big problem started for me, the computer had been on for a few days without my touching it at all, and then I discovered it frozen.
    I tried rebooting, naturally, to be able to use it again, and I haven't been able to successfully boot into Windows (XP), or 7 (- it's a dual-boot, but I mainly use XP on this one -), since.

    If I use Safe Mode, I can get into XP, but with Start Windows Normally or Last Known Good Configuration the computer either restarts or freezes right when the screen saying "Microsoft Windows XP" shows those three blue dots moving from left to right inside a narrow, long rectangle. Those freeze, always, after one or two or three cycles, and that indicates the computer has frozen.

    With Safe Mode, I noticed a long pause at mup.sys, even when the computer does get into Windows. But I don't know how to fix a problem with mup.sys, even if that's it.

    Or maybe it's the hard-drives; they're a little old and they (or maybe just one, I don't know,) have made louder whirring noises than normal for a few years now. But they've never given me a problem like this before.
    At most 2-3 tries were good enough in 100% of boot tries. The computer was never this messed up. I've got no idea what happened, but now I've tried rebooting maybe more than 50 times, and still it won't start.

    Oh, yeah, and in Windows 7 the boot process also freezes when those blue, red, yellow and green fireflies/lights (/ or whatever they are) are circling right before the login screen.
    It's very similar, as you can see.

    Could really use help. Thanks in advance.
    Last edited by newsgroup guy; 7th May 2014 at 10:00.
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  2. I don't suppose you ever took the advice given in the thread below to get a bigger hard drive?

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/363131-Windows-7-Eats-Up-Free-Space?p=2308933#post2308933

    Honestly, I'm not surprised. Between over-filling your drive and dual-booting from the same physical drive...well.

    Tried any drive diagnostics? Tried chkdsk? Have you tried running sfc /scannow when booted in safe mode?
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  3. Likely some piece of hardware has failed, or some driver updated incorrectly, or a file got corrupted. Since 7 does the same thing, likely hardware failure, but it does boot OK in Safe Mode. The mup.sys doesn't mean anything, it's usually last on the list.

    So, what you Know, is that whatever the problem is, it does not happen in Safe Mode but does in a regular boot. The tool to determine this, outside of some educated guesses, is MSconfig. Run that, start with excluding large sections, boot normal, keep adding sections till you find which one causes failure, then narrow it down.

    Disconnect any USB devices, remove any oddball cards you might have, disconnect extra drives, stripping the PC down to bare bones to a certain extent will be a faster way to eliminate a lot of possibilities, and may find the problem. Try booting with no mouse or keyboard, and yes they can cause this type of failure.
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  4. Originally Posted by fritzi93 View Post
    I don't suppose you ever took the advice given in the thread below to get a bigger hard drive?

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/363131-Windows-7-Eats-Up-Free-Space?p=2308933#post2308933

    Honestly, I'm not surprised. Between over-filling your drive and dual-booting from the same physical drive...well.

    Tried any drive diagnostics? Tried chkdsk? Have you tried running sfc /scannow when booted in safe mode?

    Thanks for the reply.

    It's not the same computer, Fritzi.
    This one with the problem for which I need help at the moment is a very crappy computer, that I bought in 2004, and quite frankly I wouldn't spend more than 5 bucks on it now.
    But I certainly don't want to see it fail. (Because it has its own monitor, and it is connected to the Internet, it can serve as a streaming unit for sports.)

    O.K., I'll try sfc / scannow and then chkdsk, as soon as I can boot into Safe Mode. Right now, that seems to give me problems, too.

    What other drive diagnostics do you mean?
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  5. Originally Posted by Nelson37 View Post
    Likely some piece of hardware has failed, or some driver updated incorrectly, or a file got corrupted. Since 7 does the same thing, likely hardware failure, but it does boot OK in Safe Mode. The mup.sys doesn't mean anything, it's usually last on the list.

    So, what you Know, is that whatever the problem is, it does not happen in Safe Mode but does in a regular boot. The tool to determine this, outside of some educated guesses, is MSconfig. Run that, start with excluding large sections, boot normal, keep adding sections till you find which one causes failure, then narrow it down.

    Disconnect any USB devices, remove any oddball cards you might have, disconnect extra drives, stripping the PC down to bare bones to a certain extent will be a faster way to eliminate a lot of possibilities, and may find the problem. Try booting with no mouse or keyboard, and yes they can cause this type of failure.

    Thanks for the reply.

    I'm not sure at all what you mean about excluding large sections with MSconfig. Where is MSconfig in Windows XP Safe Mode? And what sections are these that I have to remove and then add?

    I'm not handy enough to strip down the PC of all its parts and then keep adding them until I figure out which one doesn't work.

    And I don't believe I can boot with no keyboard, because I have to enter passwords and so on.

    Any other suggestions?

    Or any suggestions as to what I can do in Safe Mode to improve the chances of having regular mode boot?
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  6. Member burnman99's Avatar
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    http://www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig/
    You should just be able to go to Start - Run and then type in msconfig. Go to the Startup Tab and uncheck everything. Then reboot. If it boots, then its good news - Something in your Startup is causing the issue and then you can isolate from there. If not, I'd try a System Restore (Not Recovery!) to go back to a previous date and hope that resolves the issue.
    There are many ways to measure success. You just have to find your own yardstick.
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  7. Hopefully you can unplug a USB stick, and when it FAILS, in normal mode, does it make it to the password entry screen? (not from your description, it don't) If it does NOT, then you don't need the keyboard if it fails, and if you DO need the keyboard, then that was the problem. See how this works?

    If you can't unplug any internal parts, then at least unplug all external devices. If that is too difficult, then either give up, keep guessing till you find it, or pay someone to do it for you.

    If you don't know how to run MSConfig, what in God's name are you doing running a dual-boot single hard drive setup?

    Not likely System Restore is going to effect a problem in BOTH Win 7 and XP.

    More than likely, you are going to have to find someone who has at least some clue how to run diagnostics and get them in front of the box. Finding someone who has at least seen MSConfig before would be a start. Or, use Safe Mode with Networking and google it. It is not that difficult.

    Don't give up if Startup ain't it, go to the other sections and uncheck all there, one section at a time. You are searching for something that does NOT load in Safe Mode and DOES load in normal mode. Almost all the differences between Safe and Normal modes can be made in MsConfig. It is almost a dead certainty that SOMETHING that you can UN-Check in MsConfig will solve the problem. Start with whole sections, narrow it down, uncheck 20 at a time, narrow it down, re-check the entire last 20 and then un=check 10, etc.

    You should also manually check all your run sections in the registry, but I am guessing you have never done that before.

    When you get done with all this, get rid of the dual-boot or get a second hard drive. Dual-booting a single drive system, unless you have some good knowledge about what you are doing, is a very, very bad idea. You don't.
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  8. Member burnman99's Avatar
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    Actually if it's a bad driver update, then it would effect XP and 7 at the same time, and a restore would be an easy fix. First, I would first though start at the MSCONFIG Startup Tab and uncheck all of the Startup Items Only. DO NOT uncheck items in Services or in the other tabs unless you are ABSOLUTELY SURE of what they do, unchecking the wrong service can kill your machine. Also if unchecking all Startup items in MSCONFIG does not fix the problem, but the computer is NOT custom built, (like a Dell or HP or whatever), you may have another option. You can generally run a system restore from the recovery partition along with a system recovery (which nukes everything and is the last resort). This is generally more effective than a regular System Restore although it can't be undone. So if you installed a bunch of programs, and do the Restore, you would have to reinstall them. Hope this helps.
    There are many ways to measure success. You just have to find your own yardstick.
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  9. Member Budman1's Avatar
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    For what its worth, I had the same problem that got progressively worse until reboots no longer worked. Turned out to be a USB drive and/or its card or it's driver. I removed the Drive and things went well for a while but I noticed strange errors in the computer event history so I removed the driver and the card (USB 3). Nary a hiccup in years.
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  10. Format, reinstall the OS, this solves a multitude of problems.
    Doesn't take long especially if it is a simple system.

    If you have a spare hard drive, pull out the present hard drive and install spare in computer, then install OS.
    See if it works.
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