Hardware related "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN" crash HELP!!!

[JoeBot]

having already posted this problem in the drivers forum HERE, it looks like this is a hardware problem!

I have attached my last few minidumps and would be very greatfull if any one has any ideas as to the cause.

this problem has been ongoing for some time now and even after trying my system with different ram, forking out for a new psu, and performing numerouse reformat and o/s installs still persists,


basicly when ever i play GTA san an or similar game or use music production software or some times just because! my computer becomes unstable and crashes at random times!




HERE are my minidumps(zip files)

https://www.techspot.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=2221

https://www.techspot.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=2224




Please help!

thanks in advance Joe

 

[JoeBot]

plz any one?

 

[fry]

I have the exact same problem!!! I can't find anyone who will even venture a guess as to what the problen could be. If I find ANY suggestion, you can bet that I will post it here and anywhere else that I can think of. In the meantime, I am trying to work with Toshiba support to troubleshoot the problem. I think that they have a bunch of ex-shoe-salespeople working on their tech-support staff. Anyway, I get the same message DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. It seems to be a random occurance, however I have experienced it more than a few times when clicking on a video-producing link (I.e. flash link; quicktime link; etc.). It only happens once or twice a month. I hope someone comes up with something soon. I am also working with someone at Microsoft to find the most likely culprits. If memory serves, the message might occasionally end in "not_less_than". A pic of my blue screen is attached.

 

[0009]

have you tried resetting cmos, defaults in bios. reinstalling windows?

 

[fry]

I'm not sure what CMOS is, however the BIOS is set to the default settings and I have reformatted the hard drive and reloaded Windows twice. The Microsoft error reporting service can't tell me anything particularly helpful. It states only that this is a hardware issue and that I should look for any errors in device manager (i.e. yellow question marks; etc.), of which there are NONE.

 

[dado023]

deja vu

this just happened to me.............10mins ago when i got back to my pc there was waiting a BSOD on my monitor ....sometinhabout "atapi.sys" etc...

 

[rlcowboy]

IRQL is probably related to a video driver. However, it is possible if you're running a P4 that it is related to the hyper-threading function. Microsoft will never admit it, but their intelcpu.sys doesn't always work right. Try disabling hyper-threading in the bios for a while. It might slow you down some, but only for the most intense gaming. Try stressing it a bit and if it works try to redo the cpu.sys file. Also I've seen some places where they say to reserve IRQ5 for a Creative Labs sound card if you have one(pci slot x(where the sound card is) from auto to IRQ5. The atapi.sys is a cdrom driver and could be a lot of things.

 

[fry]

'Twas a driver

It turned out to be the driver for my wireless network card. I decided to look for updated drivers for all of the hardware on this particular machine and NetGear had an update for my WPN511. Ever since updating it, it's been smooth sailing.

Fry

 

[Kesai-Ki]

Hi,

I'm new here so bear with me...

I started getting the same errors as this and we speak i'm testing my cpu, i was lost i kept getting IRQL_NOT_EQUAL_OR_LESS, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA and problems with ntfs.sys, I narrowed this down to one of the following after spending a few hours on this and other related forums. it was either:-

My Power Supply,
RAM,
CPU
or
Motherboard

Now I thought it would be funny that 3 sticks of relatively new ddr400 512kb would screw up so easily. I know i need a new PSU as i've had problems with this previously so it was either my motherboard or CPU.

I downloaded Prime95, now i've heard this program sucks from some people and other people have said they value it.

when I did the first few tests it used to tell me of Hardware failure within the first few minutes.

I also downloaded MBM5 and my cpu was running at 81 celcius!!!!

I'm sure thats not right so i turned this machine off, cleaned everything from dust within my machine, after turning it on again and running Prime95 its now been on about 40 minutes and i've had no hardware failure and my cpu is now running at 47 - 60 celcius...

dont know whether this can help anyone but hopefully this is sorted now, although i still need a PSU and Silicone!

Kesai-Ki

 

[tipstir]

First of all I hope you'll are handling these chips and memory with some sort grounding you can cause some serious problems that don't show up until later on. If you have a cloths dryer grab some fabric sheets and rub them on your palms of your hands or you the fabric liquid pour some on your palms and run it in. You want to ground yourself before you start touch stuff..

Everything you brought might have gone bad now...

Again if you're going to play games on these system turn off stuff that run in the background. Clear up the REgistery and junk files off your system. Scan for AV, Spyware an etc.. Also use Windows search and look for *.dmp *.tmp files and delete those manually.

Check your Pagefile and set it a bit higher if you only got 512MB. Or get more RAM.

 

[Kesai-Ki]

First of all I hope you'll are handling these chips and memory with some sort grounding you can cause some serious problems that don't show up until later on. If you have a cloths dryer grab some fabric sheets and rub them on your palms of your hands or you the fabric liquid pour some on your palms and run it in. You want to ground yourself before you start touch stuff..

Everything you brought might have gone bad now...

Again if you're going to play games on these system turn off stuff that run in the background. Clear up the REgistery and junk files off your system. Scan for AV, Spyware an etc.. Also use Windows search and look for *.dmp *.tmp files and delete those manually.

Check your Pagefile and set it a bit higher if you only got 512MB. Or get more RAM.

Yeah, I've taken all the necessary precautions, I've not had a single error and everything seems to be running better, I have increased pagefile size and i have 1.5gb ram in total.

 

[Legoflamb]

I keep getting this annoying messages.

This is a brand new computer and its been doing it striaght out the box - i reformatted and reinstalled windows already but no joy.

The most recent one happened when i was transferring stuff over the network but nothing else was happening and I wasn't even sat at the computer when it happened.

Is this most likely ram or what? It didn't tell me any .sys files were to blame this time but at least once I've had atapi.sys and win32k.sys give me a blue screen.