DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

[Nocturnal]

I keep experiencing this stop message but there is no driver or anything like that to help me figure out what is causing it. I just know in regular mode and in safe mode with networking it will just blue screen after loading the desktop for a few minutes. If I boot into regular safe mode it won't. My guess is it has something to do with the network drivers/components.

Where can I look to see what may be causing this? I checked Event Viewer and there were no errors or warnings.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

My experiences is that IRQ not less or Equal means hardware. You say it happens when the Normal OS and Safe Mode with networking are selected, then I would assume it is the NIC. If it is onboard, go into BIOS and disable it and try to go into Windows. If it is a card, remove it and try going into Windows.

 

[Seeruk]

I aint see this since the old Windows 2000 days!!

There will be a .sys file named in the message usually... that will point you at what driver and thus what hardware is the issue. I always found it was a simple driver update to fix the issue, but my dad's was down to his CD/DVD burner and thus needed to update atapi

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
My experiences is that IRQ not less or Equal means hardware. You say it happens when the Normal OS and Safe Mode with networking are selected, then I would assume it is the NIC. If it is onboard, go into BIOS and disable it and try to go into Windows. If it is a card, remove it and try going into Windows.

Could be RAM. Run your computer through memtest a few times to rule out that possibility. But seeing as you're getting BSODs soon after booting the computer, it might be the networking devices. But yeah, definitely hardware.

 

[Nocturnal]

Just an update, it was indeed a bad memory module. It finally hit me, yes, it would blue screen while in regular and safe mode with network but not in regular safe mode... of course, that particular address in memory wasn't being accessed or written to, duh,

 

[beer]

In the future, what you can do is download windbg (google it). It's provided by microsoft.
Granted, you can't see specific modules that cause problems (in the event of IHV - indepdent vendor - device drivers).

However,
start windbg, and type '!symfix' at the command line.
then do 'open crash dump' from the file menu.
Look at the stack trace. If you see a specific .sys file, google the file name, and it will tell you which vendor was at fault.
If the stack trace shows just Windows code, there's nothing you can do, and it is in likelihood a hardware problem.

This particular bugcheck code is caused by both faulty drivers, and by faulty hardware. Genreally speaking, if you analyze the crash dump and see a vendor's driver on there, go download the latest WHQLed drivers from them.

If you see just WIndows modules, you probably have a hardware issue. This particular bugcheck code is predictable; a Vendor's driver shouldn't pass WHQL with any culprits to this bugcheck code intact. Similarly, we can assume that Microsoft wouldn't release windows with kernel mode driver issues (I've never seen this problem and have it legitimately caused by bad Windows code, just bad IHV drivers, or bad hardware).