Hi Doyle,

Having written device drivers for Windows myself, I can tell you that this
message occurs when certain kernel functions are called at the wrong IRQ
level. If the hardware of the system is OK, then this would indicate a
problem with a driver. Sometimes it could be caused by a driver, due to some
change in hardware or configuration that causes the driver to execute a
different code path than before.

The fact that it boots up in safe mode indicates that it is probably being
caused by one of the drivers not loaded in safe mode. Here are a couple
suggestions to try..

1.) If the RAM is in more than one slot, try switching them around. This
might help isolate if it is RAM (since you say you don't have any spares to
try).

2.) Just after POST, before the system starts to boot, preee 'F8', just like
you are trying to go into safe mode, but instead select "Enable boot
logging", then let it try to boot with logging enabled. It will probably
blue screen like bfore, but next time you reboot, go into safe mode, and
then view the boot log file located as "c:\winnt\ntbtlog.txt". Perhaps the
last (or one of the last) drivers loaded as mentioned in the file is the
culprit.

3.) If all else fails, try disabling all the devices except those that are
absolutely necessary, if it will boot, then enable each one by one in device
manager to see if one  will crash as you enable it.

Russ Poffenberger
[log in to unmask] 

-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Doyle Hirsch
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 8:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] IRQL


My sister's Dell 8250 running XP Home has stopped funtionning.. It
bluescreens before the boot screen with the following error:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

It will boot into safe mode. So I uninstalled the video drivers but it made
no difference. Either does trying system restore. She updated to Service
Pack 2 a couple of months ago. But it was running fine until last week. She
hasn't added any hardware. I removed Norton, but that made no difference. I
thought it might be a RAM failure but I can't check it because this computer
is using that damn Rambus RAM and of course I don't have any extra. Any
ideas before a reinstall? I checked the Knowledge Base but it didn't clear
up much.

Doyle Hirsch

           The NOSPIN Group is now accepting donations to help
          defer the costs of providing PCBUILD and our website.
           Visit http://freepctech.com to donate using PAYPAL