Hard drive there, but not there???

I have laptop that will boot up to the Windows splash screen and then nothing, black screen. Booting to safe mode gets me a little farther. In Safe Mode it runs through a bunch of files and then hangs at windows\system32\MUP.sys.

I thought the MUP.SYS file might be corrupt, so I copied the file from another laptop (same make and model as the problem laptop), but no luck. The BIOS recognizes the drive but when trying to re-install Windows (XP-Pro), it tells me no hard drive found??

Any suggestions?
Stephanie

Hi. I had the same problem a couple of times last year with some Acer Laptops. Most Windows XP-pro OSs won't install. When you boot from the cd-rom it starts well, checks your cd for intallation files but displays a blue screen saying no hard drive found.

I finally got a solution to it. I used Windows XP-Elite. Boots perfectly and installs well. its just a tweaked windows xp-pro with all the features of windows xp-pro. If you want you can upgrade this to XP-pro by using the repair option when booting from cd, it will now recognise your hard disk.

I don't know if your situation is same as mine but i hope this helps or enlightens you abit.

MUP.sys is a common place for the windows boot to hang. I found this short article quite informative: www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.html

if I got you right Stephanie you want to repair your windows but when you boot from a windows XP CD you reac ha palce where it informs you that windows found no hard drives in your system, right?

if this is the case, I bet your laptop is a new one not that old, that means your motherboard uses a new controller for your drives like AHCI or a RAID type one.

just please go into your BIOS see if the SATA controller is set to AHCI or RAID and in some BIOS they allow you to change the mode to IDE Type where you will be able to detect your drives without using a third party driver, if not then you would need to visit your laptop manufacturer check your model type and download the SATA driver or RAID one which ever it says in your BIOS settings, put the driver on a usb floppy drive and press f6 when you boot from your windows XP it will first says press f6 if you need to install a SCSI driver or a third party one.

after that you should have no problem in repairing your windows.

good luck

Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely give them a try. TheBishop, thanks for the interesting article on the MUP.sys file. It's always nice to get a little insite into all the files our machines need just to so we can do all those little computing tasks; email, work, games, internetting that we take for granted.