Constant BSOD's, Windows 7, driver irql not less than or equal

Hey guys,

Recently I've been getting the BSOD with the error message of driver irql not less than or equal. I'm pretty positive all my drivers are up to date. I have an HP dv5z-1000 and am running Windows 7 32 bit. I'm attaching the recent dmp files to see you you guys can help me out.

Thanks so much.

Your issue is with the driver athr.sys which belongs to your Atheros Wireless card.

Update your drivers from your system manufacture's website for your exact model.

Thanks for the response. However, I am having trouble with this. I manage to download the Atheros driver. When I click on the .exe file after it downloads, I get prompted to the screen where I accept the User Agreement, etc. But when the installer starts to extract the files, I get this error message:

The contents of the file cannot be unpacked. The executable you are trying to run has been corrupted. Please obtain another copy of the file, verify its integrity, and try again.

I've tried downloading the driver from both the manufacturer and third party websites and I am always getting the same error message at exactly the same point.

Download it to your desktop idf you haven't already and do security scans on this file. I am wondering also if when you go to run the executible from online if your security software isn't causing the issue.

Also the possibility the card itself is bad is a possibility.

Yea I've downloaded it to the desktop and still no luck. I did security scans as well. I also forgot to mention that this laptop originally ran Vista. I bought it two years ago and upgraded to Windows 7 exactly a year ago. However, this problem is fairly recent. It's happened to me like a couple of times over the summer, but that's it. Now it's gotten to the point where it's almost hourly.

Hmm, then it could very well be a bad card. The laptop manufacture should provide steps on their website to diagnose your wireless card.

So I was able to update the wireless card driver and it happened again last night. It hasn't happened yet so far this morning but I feel like it's a ticking time bomb. Should I assume at this point that I need a new wireless card?

Good question. See how it runs the next 48 hours. If you keep getting crashes then I say a new wireless card may be in the works.

Attach that latest crash file in your next post.

Here are the last two dump files when it crashed this afternoon.

Both error codes are the same: 0xD1. This code is usually caused by faulty drivers.

In both files they cite again the Atheros wireless driver athr.sys.

What security software are you running? What were you doing when these crashes occured? Does HP have anything on their website concerning this driver, wireless card? Anything about conflicts with particular security software? I am not saying this is the problem; just trying to eliminate any possibility.

Ok so I did some digging around and found out that there is a modded driver for the Atheros which is giving me problems. I'm downloading the driver from here:

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/15297-atheros-modded-driver-for-windws-7-vista-and-winxp/

So I have the files extracted. Now the question which I can't figure out is after I uninstall the driver via device manager, when the computer gets restarted it will automatically reinstall the device from the original driver. How do I get Windows to point to the new modded driver so it can install from there?