IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error - computer automaticly restarts

[SPB]

There is a hardware conflict. That much should be obvious. Anytime I have had a hardware problem I simply open up the "box" and take out the most recent pice of hardware added. Boot up the system and see what happens. If nothing new had been added then I take everything out and and boot up the machine to see what happens (all accept the video card that is). System boots fine, ok lets start adding things back in one by one untill we find the culprit (should put "things" back in the places they were before). This type of problem is caused by to devices not willing to share an irq. You find out whch device, if removed, fixes the problem. Then if there are spare slots on the mother board you could try moving that device to a different slot to see if after moving it, the system boots properly. If new hardware wasn't added then look at drivers (was a new driver installed?) and even new programs. This type of problem just can't start happening on its own and out of nowhere. Something had to have been changed by you or a program running on the system. A computer only does what you tell it to do and then if the computer can't do what you tell it to you get an error.

Example: I have this old Gateway computer that I was hooking up to run as a linux firewall. I installed to NIC's and an old voodo banshee video card. Started up the system to install linux and WHAM. Got basically the same message you are/were getting. So I took out the video card and restarted the system and no error. Shut down moved the NIC's so that they populated slots one and three (0 and 2) and put the video card in the middle. Booted up the system and BAM, no error.
Another Example: Had similar problem with the latest drivers from Nvidia. System would boot up run fine untill I started browsing my files or the internet and then I would get an error (something about not being able to complete drawing a frame or something). Needless to say an older driver took care of the problem.

All this may make no sense what so ever, but if you haven't fixed the problem and are still trying to get help from AnandTech forums, maybe this will help.

 

[eloric the 2nd]

yea i'm still working on the problem.. did a reformat and reinstalled windows and i'm going to do some testing with different drivers sometime soon.. maybe a little tonight... as for IRQ conflcits that was of course my first thought but no hardware was showing a conflict and the ones that most likely would IE vid card, controller card.. etc had thier on IRQ....


eloric

 

[leozh]

Double post, sorry!

 

[leozh]

When I set my FSB to 100 instead of 133 it stopped occurring, however, this is unacceptable as my cpu is running only at 1.2GHz.

 

[yazz]

i would go into the BIOS and enable RESET DATA CONFIGURATION and CLEAR NVRAM ENABLE. see it that clears up your problem. if not then try to see if you can boot into SAFEMODE and under DEVICE MANAGER change your COMPUTER from ACPI to STANDARD PC. everything will redetect on your bus. makre sure you know where your drivers are sitting on the harddrive or have your driver disks ready. the error you are getting means that you have an IRQ conflict or one of your PCI devices cannot properly share IRQs.

 

[leozh]

One problem, I don't have any PCI devices.

 

[SpeedTester]

I've tried about everything I know of and still have the problem, Reformatted W2K took everything
out but the Video card, sometimes it boots sometimes it dont! I have no clue why this crap would
happen out fo the blue, everything was fine for months.

 

[eloric the 2nd]

aight... guess what i fixed the error.... how??? well i reformated and reinstalled XP and *gasp* left all cards in there hehe... surpisingly it loaded good drivers for everything and it works fine..... there is the "?" mark referring to something to do with sound under device manager but hey its working and until i get some $$$ for a new sound card i can deal witha "?" mark.... also got great drivers for my V5 so all is well for now... thanks all

eloric