Friday February 12th, 2010. Client machine was infected with massive spyware/malware, attempted to remove while in normal mode were unsuccessful. An attempt to boot to SAFE MODE resulted in not being able to boot into any mode. The system would get to MUP.sys and hang or it would reboot.
Process: Removed HD from system, slaved to another system performed virus scans and malware scans. Found multiple infections. However when I placed it back into the computer I was still unable to boot to a Windows XP disk for a system recovery, nor could I boot to a cd period. I tried a SPIN Rite disk, no go. I tried a Ubuntu disk, the system would not recognize the boot process to CD. Tried different memory chip, different video card, reset cmos, upgraded bios, nothing worked.
Fustration and time has led me to remove data from HD for a format and re-installation. While that is occurring on a second machine I placed a new HD in system and can boot to windows disk etc. I still may need a new hard drive for the said system. Wondering if the firmware on the HD is somehow corrupted. When attached as a slave the HD works fine. At one point in all of this I unplugged the usb controller cables and moved the RAM chips to DIMM slot 3 and the system with the suspected HD booted, I entered Recovery mode and did a chkdsk -r, upon reboot the system went back to looping and freezing on all accounts and would not longer boot to a cd.
Booting to a floppy disk was hit and miss.
I will update more later.