# WinXP Pro boot with blank screen and mouse cursor only



## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

Help. Friend "white box" computer system has problem booting WinXp Pro. The sytem will pass POST, start to load WinXP Pro, get past the generic WinXP Pro splash screen, blank out the display a blank screen with mouse cursor only. Safe mode boot has similar symptom. Only difference is the "safe mode" text displayed is all 4 corners of screen.

I can move mouse anywhere on screen, but clicking buttons on keyboard or mouse has no affect. I have removed network card, set BIOS back to "failsafe" settings with no change. I have successfully built new XP pro system using different HDD. When I boot from new HDD, I can run scandisk and defrag on old (non bootable) drive with no errors. I cleaned out temp folders on non bootable HDD with no affect.

I have bootable copy of WinXP pro distribution, but system is running SP2. I don't believe I can save data from original HDD when using original XP distribution for system repair or recovery.

System Configuration:

PIII-733
VIA 694 based Mobo
nVidia geForce2 video
WD 20 GByte HDD w/80 conductor ribbon cable
192 MBytes SDRAM
52X CD-ROM reader
Floppy disk
Intel Ethernet Pro 100 NIC

I have googled the web and found refere3nces to MUP.sys being problem. I copied MUP.sys from working HDD to original HDD. System will still hang at blank screen with mouse cursor only.

Any ideas or comments??


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314503


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## Henry (Sep 20, 2004)

I have a laptop showing the same problem but with no floppy drive ! is there another way boot ?
Henry


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## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

*Alternate way to boot*

You will need to either use external floppy (common for IBM T series laptop) or bootable CD. Your BIOS needs to be configured to boot from removeable devices before the HDD for this to work.


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## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

*Link to Microsoft troubleshooting page*

To DAI:

I followed the instructions form the link you posted. Still no joy. I don't believe problem to be with file system itself (MBR or NTFS file system). Still open to suggestions or recommendations.
:1angel:


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## Whitestar90 (Nov 30, 2005)

Pcox, when you go into safe mode, are you choosing "Safe Mode with Networking" or just regular safe mode?

I ask because a few weeks ago, I had reason to go into safe mode on an office computer, and I experienced what you wrote, the black screen with Safe Mode written in the corners, and the moving mouse, without anything loading up, this did not happen when I restarted and entered "safe mode with networking"

Also, when you load the system normally, and all you have is the moving mouse, can you click CTRL+ALT+DELETE and bring up the task manager? If so, is Explorer.exe running? if not, click on File/New Task(Run...) and type in explorer.exe and see if that fixes the solution. If it does, that means that for some reason explorer.exe simply doesn't load on start-up, and will have to be manually opened 'till you can figure out why.

If explorer.exe is there, or if you can't get the task manager to open, I'm afraid I cannot help you.

--Whitestar90


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## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

*Safe mode status*

When the system hangs, CTL-ALT-DEL has no affect on system display. Right click on mouse has no affect on system display. same results when booting in any of the 3 safe modes:

Safe Mode
Safe mode with networking
Safe mode with command prompt.

Still no joy. I may build new system on similar disk, mount unbootable volume as "D Drive" and attempt to migrate files form old non-bootable volume over to new, bootable volume and then remove old volume from system.

Pat


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

did you try the last part for the repair install


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## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

*repair install*

will try again tonite. Thanx for the recommendations.


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## oshwyn5 (Sep 23, 2005)

Hope I am not too late
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../all/proddocs/en-us/recovery_run_console.mspx

What you need to do is boot to your install cd and choose the recover console 
Use command 
Logon Administrator 
to 
Logon to the admin account and at the prompt type
disable mup
(may be disable mup.sys but I think you do not type the .sys)

Also, it may be related to a USB device; so you could try unplugging all USB devices and see if it boots.


http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../all/proddocs/en-us/recovery_run_console.mspx

Basically is is trying to update and freezing .


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## pcox3921 (Jun 12, 2005)

Finally got back to system. disable MUP via recovery console did not resolve. FIXMBR via recovery did not resolve. Will try rebuilding system from scratch. Tired of fighting issue


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