HELP! IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error when installing Windows XP pro

[Techie333]

Im trying to help a friend with his upgrade........i figured starting from a clean install would be the best thing......so i went about his computer the same way I did mine (mine is working fine on XP Pro right now)

I formatted his hard drive and popped the windows xp cd in. It booted from the cd once I restarted after format and went about its business copying the files and everything. All of a sudden in the middle of the installation I get a blue screen and the following error:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

then it give me a bunch of letters and numbers about the stupid error........I've tryed installation about 3 times and i still get the same error....

WHat does this error mean? any reccommendations?

 

[rip22]

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL then it give me a bunch of letters and numbers about the stupid error

What are those numbers?

 

[TCPpacket]

I got that error too before. Took me like half a day to figure out it was a bad stick of 64 I had in the machine.

 

[Platypus]

Post the numbers

 

[bot2600]

My first guess was bad ram too, or ram pushed to hard if you are OCing.

Bot

 

[Dreadogg]

what kind of networking card do you own? By any chance is it a netgear?

 

[NogginBoink]

Well, if you really want to know what those numbers mean...

A BSOD is more technically known as a bugcheck. A STOP 0x0A bugcheck is, as you can guess, an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL bugcheck. Contrary to popular myth, this bugcheck has nothing at all to do with IRQ's.

Basically, it means that a driver attempted to access memory illegally.

The first number is the address of memory that was referenced.
The fourth number is the address of the instruction that caused the bugcheck.

The second and third numbers are the current processor IRQL and whether the operation was a read or a write, but I'm too lazy to look up which is which right now.

Now that you know what those numbers mean, you're no closer to solving your problem, are you?

BSODs during setup are almost always due to bad hardware. My recommendation is to turn off/remove as much hardware as you can from this machine and attempt to install again.

 

[oniq]

I had the same problem! I went into my BIOS and hit Optimized Defaults, rebooted, then adjusted to the right CPU mhz and it worked fine. Give it a whirl.

 

[Techie333]

Alright guys, I'll try optimizing settings in BIOS, and ill also write down the numbers when i go over there and try to install again.

His computer is a Compaq 7478 or something like that.........its has the wierdest motherboard ive never heard of.............Camaro motherboard or something like that w/ AMD k6-2 550mhz? something like that. So anyway..........if the optimize setting don't work....ill try removing memory sticks and all the hardware I can.


EDIT: no networking............only 56k modem.........

 

[Darein]

I had that same error message and what fixed it for me was swapping out with a second harddrive. The first one was messed up when I formatted it.

 

[Techie333]

darein, was there any indication that ur original drive was messed up other than the IRQL error cause my friend has two hard drives and i formatted his first one which is where he wants windows.......but i left his second one......

 

[RedRooster]

Dang!! I had that exact same error when I tried installing my AMD XP yesterday, but I assumed it was hardware conflicts with stuff I already had, rather than the fact that I changed the RAM setting to turbo in the BIOS. I've already RMA'ed it, but this'll be good to know if I ever see that message again!
I feel like a reject.