IRQL error

[bloke 0]

(HI, I'm new and I have a problem)

 

Got up yesterday morning and found the pc won't start at all. Each time the powerup process gets to the user select screen (there are two people with separate logon accounts) the machine restarts. It won't even start in safe mode because the same thing happens. I tried starting with removing the auto restart on error function and got the following error messages ('a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage'):

 

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

 

and

 

'technical information: ***STOP:0X0000000A (0X0A08000D, 0X00000002 (or Z i couldn't tell), 0X00000000, 0X804EC6D4)'

 

No other information about the error (the message just said restart the machine basically, which I can't).

 

Machine: Pentium 4 2ghtz, 256mb ram, ati radeon 7500, partioned hard drive (20gb, 76gb; roughly) and XP pro. Used to be my dad's but is used by me and my brother with separate user accounts. I don't know a huge amount about technical issues as well (so if it's hardware related I'm scr3w3d).

 

Thanks.

[peterh 1]

Its a driver problem this. All I can suggest is to remove all un necessary peripherals and PCI cards (except graphics card)

and then try rebooting. Then add them one by one reboot and see which one is causing the problem.

 

More info on STOP messages here:

http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm

 

[bloke 0]

Are you 100% sure it's a driver issue; I've heard it might be hardware based (not that I have a clue mind you).

 

What causes this?

[sanjayofindia 0]

I have a VIA Motherboard with onboard AGP card and Sound card. With no other device on this, even then I receive the message driver_irql_not_less_or_equal.

 

So, I am not sure if this is going to solve the problem because I cannot remove anything.

 

any suggestions?

 

Sanjay (sanjayofindia@gmail.com)

[American Zombie 0]

One reason could be bad ram. Check your RAM using memtest86+ and run at least 5 passes if you don't get earlier errors. Also try the modules one by one and in different slots.

 

[bloke 0]

Well here is the wierd thing. My brother has somehow reinstalled windows xp. Now the computer works (or seems to), but XP exists twice on the c drive. Formatting the c drive from the dos prompt doesn't work either because the command says the drive is invalid. Perhaps the hard drive is screwed. I don't really understand how XP can exist twice on the machine, but this installation appears stable.

[Xtnded 0]

Following the installation of the MS security rollups, hotfixes etc., we had brand new Dell/WinXP pro systems go BSOD with the same Stop Error that you received.

 

Since the systems worked perfectly prior to the updates being applied, we rolled them back to their OEM or "out-of-box" state

and the problems magically went away.

 

MS still can't explain why a Win2000 system that worked flawlessly, suddenly began displaying the BSOD with Plug n' Play based Stop Errors. Nor can they explain why those errors went away when the Plug n' Play hot fix was removed.

 

Does this mean that the latest updates from MS are breaking systems? Who knows for sure...

[bloke 0]

Interestingly our new version of XP has none of those updates (the other, old, though still present, version did). Maybe that's the cause.