XP Hangs On Boot After Soft Reset

[Piyono]

Yesterday my otherwise-stable XP box started hanging at the Windows splash screen, but only after a soft reboot, e.g., after choosing "Restart" from the XP shutdown menu, or after hitting the reset button on the box. The hang occurs regardless of whether I'm booting in Normal Mode or in Safe Mode, and regardless of whether the restart was invoked from inside Windows XP or from a DOS program It appears that as long as the system boots from a soft reset XP will hang at the splash screen.

Booting in Safe Mode reveals that the last system driver loaded is mup.sys. It would appear that XP is hangning while attempting to load a device driver.

The only way Windows will boot is after a cold start (i.e., from a powered-off state).

I've examined the ntbtlog.txt boot log file from a successful (cold) boot but I see no indication that anything is amiss. No boot log is created on a failed boot, which means the system is hanging before the initialization of smss.exe.

The last thing I did before this problem started was to install the driver software for my Nokia DKU-5 USB interface cable. Since the problem started I have uninstalled the driver using the program's own uninstall routine, but the soft reboot hang persists.

As the problem occurs only on a soft reboot it's reasonable to assume that either the RAM or the BIOS is at fault. I tested the RAM with one cycle of Memtest86+ but no errors came up. I have yet to reset my BIOS defaults, but I'll do that next and report back.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate any input anyone may have on the matter. I can post the contents of my boot log file if anyone wants to inspect it.

Thanks,


Piyono

 

[Mercutio]

MUP.sys is a file related to Windows networking. It's one of the last drivers that loads before XP starts.

I think the first thing to try is an XP repair install.

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

What does WinXP Task Manager / Processes show running?

If you recognise a memory-resident program that's been recently installed, you might try killing that process to see if you can perform a normal shutdown.

Do you have Norton / Symantec Anti-Virus running?

 

[Piyono]

Merc, I don't think mup.sys has anything to do with the problem, I just pointed it out as the last driver that loads before the system hangs. It's most likely a device driver loading *after* mup.sys that's messing up.

Device manager doesn't show anything running that wasn't running before the problem started.


Piyono

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

Now, try unplugging every unneeded Firewire and USB device.

 

[Piyono]

Yeah, already did that. No love.

Progress report:

I performed a System Restore to a point immediately before the problem first occured. No love.

When I restart my computer now, before the XP splash screen I get a Win2K-style segmented, gray progress bar at the bottom of the screen; something I've never seen before with XP. Why?

It struck me that the hang occurs regardless of whether I boot normally or in Safe Mode, so long as it's from a reset. With this in mind I enabled boot logging and started Windows cold twice; once in normally and once in Safe Mode. I then compared the similarities in the boot logs with Beyond Compare.
Now, I can always tell when my computer is going to boot properly within a couple of seconds by the presence of several indicators: the lights on my keyboard flash, the progress bar stalls for a split second then my Delta1010 soundcard pops through the speakers. When the system hangs during a soft reboot none of these occur.
Since the hang occurs before the keyboard lights flash it stands to reason that the hang is occuring before the keboard drivers have loaded. Studying the similarities between the two bootlogs reveals seven drivers in common that load after mup.sys and before the keyboard driver. These are:

usbohci.sys - OHCI USB Miniport Driver
usbehci.sys - EHCI eUSB Miniport Driver
impai.sys - IMAPI Kernel Driver
cdrom.sys - SCSI CD-ROM Driver
redbook.sys - Redbook Audio Filter Driver
Asapi.sys - ASAPI
fdc.sys - Floppy Disk Controller Driver

Assuming one of these drivers is to blame, it should be a simple matter of disabling them all to see if the problem clears and if so, reenabling them again one at a time to see which one is at fault.

How do I disable startup drivers?


Piyono

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

As long as the file in question is not "busy," you could disable by renaming the file by adding an underscore character to the first letter position.

 

[Piyono]

I removed the common driver files listed above from the /windows/system32/drivers directory and selected "restart" from the shutdown menu. Lo and behold! It worked.
Looking back in the /drivers directory I noticed that all of the driver files except asapi.sys had been magically regenerated. I compared the restored files with the files I removed using their MD5 signatures, expecting to find a difference in at least one of them. Oddly enough, they all matched up! Strage, huh?

Piyono

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

Are you entirely sure about the origins of ASAPI.SYS?

I don't ever recall seeing running into ASAPI.SYS, unless you meant to say ASPI.SYS or ATAPI.SYS.