Hey guys, I'm running Windows XP and getting random BSOD's saying "irql_not_less_or_equal"...
Sometimes its an adf.sys, or 0x00000000's.

I have...
2 x 512MB of DDR Dual Channel RAM
ASUS P5GD1 Motherboard
160 GB Western Digital Hard Drive
3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 Processor
ATI Radeon X600 Video Card
BENQ 1625 DVD Burner with Lightscribe (which is really sweet!)
Easy TV MPEG TV Tuner card
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy sound card

Anyone know what could be causing these? if you need any other info just post. I've attached minidumps.

Thanks in advance!

-Adam™

Hi Adam,

The culprit is faulty memory. You can run memtest to stress the ram. If memtest reports the ram is faulty, ram is bad. However Memtest is not a perfect tool to test the memory as some faulty ram can pass memtest.

Suggestion
1. Check the temperature of the CPU and make sure that it is not overheat (ie temperature < 60C)
Make sure that the CPU fan works properly
2. Reseat the memory stick to another memory slot
3. Downclock the ram
4. Clean the dust inside the computer case
5. Make sure that the ram is compatible to the motherboard
6. Check the bios setting about memory timing and make sure that it is on
If it still crashes, diagnostic which memory stick is faulty
1. Take out one memory stick. If windows does not crash, the removed memory stick is faulty.
2. If you have only one memory stick, replace the ram

One minidump shows that windows at timer routine and this is the symptom of hardware error.

STACK_TEXT:
80550034 804dbcee 86a23828 86a23830 00000002 nt!KiUnlinkThread+0xc
80550048 804dbdea 00000000 80550064 00000000 nt!KiUnwaitThread+0x12
80550074 804dc4a8 dd53aac3 00000034 8055019c nt!KiWaitTest+0xab
80550180 804dc378 80558e80 80558c20 ffdff000 nt!KiTimerListExpire+0x7a
805501ac 804dbbd4 80559280 00000000 0000c834 nt!KiTimerExpiration+0xaf
805501d0 804dbb4d 00000000 0000000e 00000000 nt!KiRetireDpcList+0x46

How do you tell what all those numbers mean? I see a bunch of random numbers and letters and you decyphr them. How do you do it?

Hi,

Use microsoft windbg to format the minidump.