John,

the blue screen comes up right after the Dell loading screen, black with a
brief progress bar which runs for maybe five seconds as soon as you turn on
the computer. There is then an immediate blue screen with the IRQL error. I
did a Google search too and basically it said it could be anything which
ain't that helpful. I did a bootlog and it showed that the system stopped
loading after driver" agp440.sys" and right before driver "ACPI
Multiprocessor PC". This is very early in the process.

Doyle



The Law has been broken.....He who breaks the Law shall be punished - back
to the House of Pain!




>I did a quick Google on that error message and it looks like it can be any
>number of things, from software to hardware problems.
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prmd_stp_hwpg.asp
>(this is one long URL, so you may need to cut and paste)
>
>http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.html
>
>Since you can't swap memory, maybe try MemTest86 to see if it comes up with
>any errors, though it could also come up with an error if the problem is
>with the processor or chipset.  Still this would point more to a hardware
>than a software problem, since MemTest86 runs from a bootable disk.
>
>Prime95's torture test should bring up this error (or one of its own) in a
>hurry, even under safe mode, if the problem is heat related, I would think.
>
>You said it generates this message before the boot screen, but I'm not
>clear
>which one you mean, since you seem to be able to get into safe mode.
>
>John Sproule
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Doyle Hirsch" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 11:40 PM
>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.
>
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