driver_irql_not_less_or_equal and more

hello people. my PC is in absolute shambles.

AMD Athlon XP 2500+
768mb RAM
Creative Audigy 2 ZS soundcard
WinFast A280 Ti4200
I'll find out the rest of my specs, i've forgotten...


Firstly, I've been getting random blue screens and sometimes the computer resets itself. It could be once a day, but often happens every few hours. The blue screens usually have the error DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, and usually refers to one (now and again two) of these drivers:

<<these two are for my audigy 2 zs soundcard I think>>
ctaud2k.sys
ha10kx2k.sys

portcls.sys
nv4mini.sys
usbport.sys

<<these two have only just happened very recently, might be one offs?>>
mauhid.sys
afd.sys

Now, these blue screens or restarts seem to happen randomly, they dont seem to be triggered by any cause. They have been happening for ages, must be over a year, i reinstalled windows many times, and even on a different partition but still hasnt solved the problem. Now and again the crash causes my USB modem to malfunction on restart and i have to replug it (works fine then - not sure if this means anything). Because my pc seems to work okay and the blue screens are random, i dont know whats wrong really.

Also, something thats been happening recently, I have 2 users set up on XP. If one is kept logged in, and you try to log in to the other, it starts up for a bit, but then freezes. You have to log out to log the other user in, whats this about??

If anyone can help i'd be more than grateful.

 

This is usually the result of a corrupt RAM, I had this error before and when I replaced my RAM it disappeared. So try replacing the ram, or if you have several RAM chips installed, keep take one of them out until the error stops happening.

There is another reason as well, the RAM Controller chip on the motherboard could be malfunctioning which would result in the same error, if this is the case then you'll most likely have to replace the motherboard.

 

cheers for the help, I've done as you said in the attachment. However I know there have been crashes that havent registered anything in the system log, whether that is normal i dont know.

about the RAM: I know a while ago when i was having these problems i ran a memory check utility and it seemed to come back fine. havent tried in a while though.

 

quick bump

 

It's the log saved from Event Viewer. Go to Event Viewer then Action -> Open Log File and it opens all the info in event viewer itself.

 

Have you chacked out what driver each of those files is related to ?

Code:

ctaud2k.sys    Creative SoundBlaster Drivers
ha10kx2k.sys   Creative SoundBlaster Drivers
portcls.sys    Microsoft SOundCard Drivers

nv4mini.sys    Nvidea Graphic Card Drivers

usbport.sys    Intel USB Drivers

afd.sys        TCP/IP

If I was you i'd be checking the drivers for your soundcard first then your graphics card and then your network card before you think about removing memory modules.

If you are willing to go removing bits of herdware (which you do at your own risk and potentially voiding your warranty) i'd remove all the peripherals such as sound card and network card and replace them one at a time and attempt to replicate the error until you find/eliminate any faulty hardware.

 

Still suffering with these problems, havent had a chance to post in a while though.

RE: overheating - i have fitted a good fan to my CPU and i think it runs at about 55c so that should be okay. However, I attempted to replace the video card fan with a better more quiet cooler, but the 2 pin adapter didnt fit the weird 3 pin slot that my Leadtek Ti4200 has for its fan. So although its fitted on with its heatsink the fan doesnt turn. Could this be a problem? Graphics intensive programs don't seem to trigger it off so I'm not too sure.

Oh and there's 2 things which I failed to mention that might help diagose:

When the PC crashes and I restart it or it restarts by itself, sometimes my USB modem doesnt function, and i have to unplug it and replug it in, it then works fine. Also, sometimes after a crash the system clock will change, usually makes it about half an hour fast or so for some reason?? Does this signify a certain type of fault??

 

Yep winxp SP 2. Note that it the system can keep the time fine usually; it just sometimes skips ahead a little bit when it crashes for some reason.

 

Oh and another problem - if I leave my PC on overnight, and it doesn't crash, its pretty much inevitable that my internet connection just dies. No data can be transferred, i click disconnect on the network icon in my system tray and nothing happens - after that right clicking the network icon or the "safely remove hardware" usb icon does nothing. I then ctrl-alt-del and click the networking tab but this crashes the device manager.

Also when I shut down, 9 times out of 10 it freezes on the "Windows is saving your settings" screen. I'm not sure if all these are related but I wouldnt be surprised as I've had similar problems throughout many windows installations.