Thanks to anyone who might be able to help me on this. I have had a problem where my Compaq won't boot past the XP Slash/boot screen. I can boot into anything on the F8 menu except boot normally. I thought it was an AGP video card problem, so I swapped it with another AGP video Card, it booted into Windows once, then wouldn't boot after the initial boot with that configuration. It does that with a PCI video card. Then I checked the RAM, booting with only one stick (256 MB), and nothing. I changed out the Power Supply, didn't work. Reset the bios, didn't work. Unplugged all devices except keyboard, monitor, mouse, HDD, and CD-Rom, didn't work. It does it with XP Home and XP Pro. I reformatted many times and this problem won't go away. Swapping monitors didn't work either. I tried a Samsung SyncMaster 173S TFT/LCD monitor with it, same problem. I now have it as a dual boot system with Windows 98 SE, and Windows 98 boots just fine. I used to be able to boot into XP just fine. The only major change I did before the problem occurred is I tried to Install Freespire Linux on the system, and it locked up during installation. The other thing I did was I had it at my dad's house one day, and used his old CRT monitor, a Magitronic made for use with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, it's that old, and the thing wouldn't boot past the splash screen. But I've reformatted since then. Anybody have any ideas that I haven't tried? Thanks for the help. If it ain't broke, screw it up so you can fix it.

Forgot to mention that I checked the HDD with a good computer with chkdsk.exe, and a disk checker from the maker of the HDD, so it's not the problem. Also, my CPU fan is working great, just cleaned it, and my case fan is also working. I have only a 250 Watt P/S in it, think I should get a bigger wattage p/s? Full System specs on the machine: Compaq Presario 5003R AMD Duron 800MHz 320MB Ram Quantum Fireball lct20 30GB HDD nVidia Vanta LT (Compaq) AGP Video Card (installed) SiS 315T 64MB AGP Video Card (not installed right now) Trident Blade 3D 9880 PCI Video Card (not Installed) HP D3858A 15" CRT monitor D-Link DFE-530TX+ Express 10/100Mbps PCI Ethernet NIC Card mouse Compaq Internet USB Keyboard VIA Chipset Compaq BIOS Dual Boot with Windows 98SE (C: Drive) & Windows XP Home (D: Drive, and NTSF File System) Thanks again for the help. If it ain't broke, screw it up so you can fix it.

Well, if you feel comfortable modifying your boot.ini, add /sos to the end of your WinXP boot. That'll cause Windows to display what driver it's trying to load (and where it's crashing).

I had the same thing before, mine stopped at "mup.sys", googled many pages, no definet answer, everybodys pc stops there. so started changing one thing at a time, mine was usb controler, but it seems many things can be to blame from bad ram to drivers, sorry, not much help.

You have a dual-boot '98/XP system at present that won't boot to XP normally but it will boot to safe-mode? Did this system "ever" boot to XP normally - prior to current situation? Is the system OK for XP - as in compliant? Perhpas - via '98 - run the XP upgrade advisor util to see what "may not" be OK? On the face of it it does sound like a driver issue; and "Razor's" suggestion may help you determine which it is... However is there not an option on the F8 screen to start with a boot-log approach; the one that lists (on the screen) each item as it loads (or tries to in your case...)? Possibly a repair-routine (essentially a re-install over itself) may resolve it...

This guy suggests flashing your BIOS, or otherwise reseting your Extended System Configuration Data. Might be worth a shot.

I'd be very reluctant to (re)flash bios at this stage of events.. at least not until all other avenues have been explored. We don't know at this stage if the system "ever" worked with XP; if it is actually OK for XP - without any updates to drivers etc. - and if not then that of course could/would include a bios flash in some cases...?