BSOD - Driver IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL

osaddict · October 2008

A colleague has a BSOD which tends to occur regularly if she leaves her PC on overnight or at the weekend, however, its started happening during the day now.

The most recent of which happened about 20mins ago.

This is clearly a huge pain for her as she looses any unsaved work (she publishes a lot of stuff using Indesign, and the other bits in Creative Suite etc)

The whole 'Driver IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL' is not overly useful from what I gather - it can mean quite a bit.

I looked in the event viewer and found the following, when I looked at the 'The previous system shutdown @ XX.pm was unexpected' event:

Binary data:


In Words

0000: 000A07D8 000E0002 0006000D 01F4003B 
0008: 000A07D8 000E0002 0006000C 01F4003B 
0010: 00001C20 0000003C 00000001 00001C20 
0018: 00000000 00000E10 00000001 00000030 


In Bytes

0000: D8 07 0A 00 02 00 0E 00   Ã˜.......
0008: 0D 00 06 00 3B 00 F4 01   ....;.Ã´.
0010: D8 07 0A 00 02 00 0E 00   Ã˜.......
0018: 0C 00 06 00 3B 00 F4 01   ....;.Ã´.
0020: 20 1C 00 00 3C 00 00 00    ...<...
0028: 01 00 00 00 20 1C 00 00   .... ...
0030: 00 00 00 00 10 0E 00 00   ........
0038: 01 00 00 00 30 00 00 00   ....0...



- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
  <Provider Name="EventLog" /> 
  <EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID> 
  <Level>2</Level> 
  <Task>0</Task> 
  <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> 
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2008-10-14T12:12:47.000Z" /> 
  <EventRecordID>67934</EventRecordID> 
  <Channel>System</Channel> 
  <Computer>JennyVista</Computer> 
  <Security /> 
  </System>
- <EventData>
  <Data>13:06:59</Data> 
  <Data>14/10/2008</Data> 
  <Data /> 
  <Data /> 
  <Data>14604</Data> 
  <Data /> 
  <Data /> 
  <Binary>D8070A0002000E000D0006003B00F401D8070A0002000E000C0006003B00F401201C00003C00000001000000201C000000000000100E00000100000030000000</Binary> 
  </EventData>
  </Event>

Any ideas what may be causing this?

I've asked her if its a specific thing she does which triggers it, she doesn't think so, and the fact that it occurs often overnight suggests it's not user based.

(Lastly, apologies if this doesn't count as an 'emergency' - it kinda is for her! - Feel free to move it if you feel it's inappropriate)

primesuspect · October 2008

Usually if it's unexpected, it's a hardware issue. It may be a dying power supply, a hard drive issue, or bad memory. I'd start by running Memtest. If the memory and HD check out, it could very well be the PSU.

osaddict · October 2008

I've ran a memtest86 a little while ago, and it turned up nothing (little while ago = 5 months or so probably) so I guess I could run that again.

HD Check - I could just run a checkdisk on the drive I assume?

Thrax · October 2008

You'll want to use Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test or Seagate's SeaTools for DOS to scan the disk. If any of them report bad sectors, it's time to dump the drive o' course.

osaddict · October 2008

Thanks Thrax, I've just burn't an ISO of SeaTools for DOS, ill give it a go when I can get access to her PC.

Is memtest86 still the tool of choice for scanning RAM? (or at the very least an OK choice, since I have burnt ISO of this ready to go

)

Thrax · October 2008

Yessah. Memtest is still the best weapon.

BSOD - Driver IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL

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