IRQL_not_less_or_equal - something...

Running Vista SP1 and from time to time I get BSOD that hangs around just long enough for me to read "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" - but before I can write down anything, the BSOD goes away and the system re-boots. Is there a log somewhere that I can find out what's causing the BSOD, or is there a way to make the error hang around long enough for me to read the entire thing?

 

Supply any administrator authorities required

Hold the windows key down, hit pause/break.
Choose advanced system settings from the list on the left
Click on the startup and recovery settings button at the bottom
Uncheck the box marked automatically restart on system failure

Click your way out through thevarious OKs.

The error you refer to is usually 0x00000A and occurs when a driver or process tries to access memory it is not allowed to.

Check any new drivers installed lately.
It can also occur with failing hardware.

 

OK - that was easy - it shows that it will create a dump, I'm assuming that the dump will show which driver caused the problem - right? Wait, this is Window$ - I can't assume that, can I? I've experimented with bringing down Blackberry Device Manager when I'm not actually using it, and it might APPEAR that I don't get the BSOD's when that program isn't in memory - does that make any sense? But my wife's laptop is running Vista SP1 and she leaves her Blackberry software running all the time, but doesn't get BSOD's - so maybe that's not it. I just love Windows...

 

Yes it's Windows so the minidump is not in plain English.

See Adrynalynes's sticky

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246&highlight=minidump

 

OK, I ran the diagnostic tool and I think it's pointing to something called kl1.sys - that's a Kaspersky driver, so I've begun the process of having Kaspersky take a look at the problem. Thanks for your help!!

 

Yes Kaspersky is a very tough AV, but in some installations it can be a bitch.

If you have to remove it, and have trouble, they have a removal tool on their site.

 

Oh, man, I hope I don't have to remove it - I bought a 2-yr license for three pc's, and I'm sure they wouldn't issue a refund, partial or otherwise. Maybe they can figure out the problem and fix it - I've sent them the documentation, etc. I as also having a problem where AVP was generating billions of bytes in reads, even when nothing was going on - that ticket is still open so I just combined the BSOD problem with it - maybe they can figure it out. I like KIS better than anything I've used so far, but the BSOD problem is a show-stopper, I'm afraid.