There was a power outage at my home a while back, and my computer was on at the time. When I turn it on, it repeatedly cycles through the same 3 boot-up screens (which I attached). This has happened before, but in the past, it would cycle 2 or 3 times, and then continue to the login screen. Now, it just keeps going, over & over & over. I don't know much about the computer, other than a friend built it for me back in 2003, it has 2 hard drives, and that one of them (the non-system drive) is a 500 mb drive that I reformatted a while back. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[recovering disk space -- attachment deleted by admin]What if you try Safe Mode?

Try unplugging the computer for about 5 minutes and then plug it back in.Unplugging the computer, then plugging back in after 5 minutes, doesn't help it boot. It repeats the same 1-2-3 cycle. Same goes for the Safe Mode.Will it boot from Windows CD?The friend who built my computer didn't give me any discs, so I don't know. I suppose I could just buy XP & reformat my main drive, but then I'd lose all the content I'm trying to get.Slight CORRECTION on something I mentioned earlier -- when I try to boot in Safe Mode, a list of files starts showing up on the screen, but stops when "MUP" shows up... and then reboots itself.What is MUP?MUP.sys is the last thing XP loads before executing....So, What happens after we see the mup.sys DRIVER load on a safe mode boot?

The windows OS is looking in the registry, executing PnP (Plug and pray) and ACPI routines checking the components and resources found.
It then starts these components possibly causing more draw on the power supply. Consider here the load of non-self-powered USB devices.

If there are any unrecoverable problems here, that will cause the system to hang and it will look the same. - The system hangs during a
safe mode boot after loading mup.sys!

The main reasons for this Windows XP or Win 2000 boot hang or alleged mup.sys issue are:

* Hard disk failure or corruption
* A corrupted registry or registry hive
* New hardware has been installed but not did not completely "Register or re-Register" correctly
* New hardware has been installed but it is faulty or failing
* The new hardware's driver or windows itself has been compromised (Disk data corruption or by a virus) or (rare) needs to be updated
* The power supply is marginal in output or failing (Common PER user feedback)
* BIOS\ESCD\Motherboard chipset driver conflict with a component, its driver, or its registry data
* Existing hardware including the motherboard may have failed in a specific way but not catastrophically.

In my experience, I have never found that the mup.sys driver is actually the cause of the problem but replacing it with a known good uninfected version
won't hurt if just to exclude that possibility. Also, disabling the mup.sys driver by USING the RECOVERY console normally does not help either. Windows will
then just hang at the driver that loads prior to mup.sys.

From here: http://www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.htmlQuote

MUP.sys is the last thing XP loads before executing....