What in the hell? [Win XP Blue Screen Error]

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:44 am

So I'm on my PC at home, I've just installed CloneCD and Clony and I've just finished burning CDs, when WinCinemaMgr decides its going to go all unresponsive on me. I figure "Fine, its not important, I'll just reset my system." Big mistake. All of a sudden, right after the boot screen (modded to Nerv XP, I like...) I get my worst enemy... the blue screen of death. I read it, and I get chills and break out in a cold sweat, and the room suddenly feels about 20 degrees hotter. It says:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO

Followed by a whole bunch of useless ways to solve the problem, none of which worked, I might add. Ater this is a STOP Followed by a rather large Hex address. Which I foolishly don't have on me right now...

But anyway, I can now no longer access Windows XP on my computer... which means I'm totally screwed. And after repairing the installation, which didnt work, it gets to the boot screen and hangs. Its jsut sits there, displaying the frozen boot screen as if to taunt me. Safe mode hangs as soon as it tries to load MUP.SYS, and Last Good Configuration just shows a black screen.

Now the IRQ part of the error makes me think theres a major conflict somewhere, but disabling all but the hard drive in the CMOS/BIOS setup doesnt change a thing, just makes it slower. I'm thinking (maybe, I dunno) a problem arose when Clony asked me to assign drive letters, and apparently I had 4 optical drives attached - 1 DVD Rom, 1 Burner, 1 CD-Rom and an extra DVD rom from somewhere. Now seeing as it wouldn't let me only assign 3, I made the extra one "I". After I tried to make a raw copy of a cd in CloneCD using Clonys settings, and failed, I RAW DAO/96'd the cd in Nero. Which is when wincinemamgr chucked a shit.

Am I totally screwed? Because at the end of this I'm going home and formatting the fuck out of win XP and reinstalling it. I'm just glad I can turf WIN98 on the other partition and use the 5-odd gb of free space to back up my documents and my newest AMVs, just in case something goes horribly wrong.

But could someone tell me exactly what that error

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO

Means please?

azulmagia · Post by **azulmagia** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:51 am

Blue screens often point to memory problems. If you start a program and nothing happens, it just crashes back to the desktop (EG you click on 3Dmark and it displays the small logo thing, then just crashes back to the desktop without any error messages at all, but the system is still running, it hasn’t locked) that usually points to memory problems as well.

A blue screen with an error message like “IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO” generally means your video card is being pushed too far. Read the section above on PCI/AGP to get a short list of what you should look for to tell if your video or expansion cards are pushed too far.

If your computer works fine for a while, say 5 minutes or longer, but then locks up, it is probably a heating problem. Put more case fans in, get a better CPU HSF, or lower your overclock. See the section below on CPU Overheating.

I got that quote from http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=6&t=510

I'm no expert on computers though

Jesus, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:55 am

My video card? strange... never had a problem with it before... I'll have to look into that when I get home... I never thought of my video card being the problem.,..

Thanks for the speedious (sp?) reply, Azu. I'm not quite so stressed out now... still feel like I could bite through a cinder-block wall though...

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:59 am

Plus I don't overclock, my system is fine the way it is...