IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL....what does this mean?

[kentonerooni]

i just installed XP on my computer a few days ago and every now and then, my computer will restart on its own. i took off the Auto Restart and saw the BSOD. my error message was, "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL". this is the same message i was receiving while trying to do a clean install of XP. i had to install it under NTFS because it didn't work with FAT32. i honestly have no idea what the difference is between the two. i went to the Microsoft page to try and figure out what that message means but it just gave me a whole lot of stuff that i cannot comprehend. can anyone tell me what this means and how i might be able to fix it??? PLEASE?!?!?!

 

[FMJGomerPyle]

I had this problem when I installed 2000 a while ago. It had to do with my hardrive scattering data while 2000 was installing, or something like that. I used the disk that came with my harddrive to write all zeros to the drive and then install 2000 and it worked.

 

[KB]

I have received that BSOD because of driver conflicts or bugs. Make sure you are up-to-date with your drivers. If you get the BSOD after updating a driver go back to the old one. You could also try removing all of your non-essential hardware and slowly adding them back into your system to see which one is causing it.