blue screen flash

Title says it all. Anybody help a novice running windows xp?

 

If you're talking about a blue screen error (aka BSOD for Blue Screen Of Death) that appears for half a second upon booting, and then PC keeps rebooting and the blue screen flashes, over and over... press F8 repeatedly upon turning on the PC. Eventually you'll see a Boot Options Menu with Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, and a bunch more. Select 'Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure'. That way the BSOD will stay visible so you can post the error code and message.

hopperdave2000

 

Naw just running computer when suddenly blue screen flash appears and computer restarts. Sometimes it says "not less than equal" or similar other times not.

 

IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.
That's a particular nasty one... SOMETIMES moving some of the PCI cards a to other slots works .. typically the PCI devices that are "sharing" on the motherboard. Check the mobo documentation for which slots share and IRQ assignment. Yes, I know the IRQ's are handled as well in the OS, but they their assignment is derived from the bios.. anywho..

I used to have that with Win2000.. was able to save it once with a device move but every time after that was a reinstall.. (twice)

 

Try going into the BIOS and looking for something like 'PNP Operating System Installed' or maybe 'Plug and Play OS' and change it to 'No' or 'Disable'. It will probably be under the heading 'PCI Settings' or maybe 'PnP/PCI Settings' or something close. Save the BIOS changes and reboot. That may fix it by re-routing the IRQ assignments from Windows to the motherboards own logic circuits.

hopperdave2000