minidump files?

every 3 or 4 days my comp. will display a blue screen with a lot of text in white basicly telling me to restart. i didnt see anything in the event viewer. i read the faq on debugging these dump files to identify the problem , but the faq on how to do this is really confusing. as of now there are 4 dump files in the minidump folder. how should i go about this issue altogether? thanks win xp 2000 sp2

 

• ok hapenned again and this is what is said on the blue screen
• driver_irql_not_less_or_equal
• stop: 0x000000d1 (0x00000004 , 0x00000000 , 0x881cd3dc)
• not sure what all that is but figured it might be important

 

TBH, you are the first person to tell me that they found it confusing.

You could zip them up and attach them to a post, and someone else will check them for you.

 

ok theres all the ones i have. thanks

 

Okily dokily.

Looks to me like a sound driver is causing it. that file (emu10k1m.sys) is associated with Creative Labs Sound drivers. You might want to check that your sound drivers are the correct versions and correct for your card. You might also try rolling back to a previous verison of the driver to see if this keeps happening.

 

thanks for checking that out. i went to the creative site and used the auto update detect and it said i have the latest drivers. however when i manually looked up the drivers it does show an update. should i try the update since i guess thats my only option. maybe the auto detect was wrong?

 

It's certainly possible.

Trying a different driver, even if it is an older one, may do the trick. Sometimes the programmers who write drivers make mistakes when they update their drivers - so an older driver without that problem may work until they've recognised the problem and fixed it.

 

i reinstalled the drivers from cd that came with the sound card and all is good so far. thanks for your time and assitance.