The Gamer's Quarter

dessgeega · Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 7:40 am Post subject: driver_IRQL_not_less_or_equal

this message crashes my computer, often while i am playing sexy freeware games. what's it mean?
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dhex · Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 7:14 pm Post subject:

if i had to guess it might be a sound driver issue. or something else but i'm hunching in that direction. are you using dosbox? does it happen under vdms?
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dessgeega · Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 7:32 pm Post subject:

i don't think it's ever happened while using dosbox. it could be a sound driver issue, because my computer makes horrible screeching noises when it happens.

what's vdms?
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Some quick googling on that error seems to indicate that a lot of people get it and they get it for a variety of reasons, including overheating systems and/or corrupted drivers for one of your expansion cards. For the former, I would check to make sure that your fans aren't getting stuck or are working at all. For the latter, I would possibly reinstall the drivers? Although that can get messy.

Also apparently ZoneAlarm can cause this to happen, if you're running it. And bad RAM! Man, there are a lot of possible causes.

Quick Shot II Turbo · . Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 23 Location: harry potter

This error has forced me to reinstall xp more than once. Up to this day I've never been able to figure out why I got it and how I/it managed to fuck up my Windows install so badly that it wouldn't even boot in Safe Mode.

But yeah, as Scratchmonkey said, start checking every driver you've installed recently. Checking the Device Manager for any errors is a good start.
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I love how all of a sudden there are all these "newbies" starting threads about all the problems with the PS3 that they're having. Seems like a conspiracy to me.

Six · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 313 Location: montreal

This is one of the gang that, along with PFN_LIST_CORRUPT and a dirty half-dozen more, this computer has been plagued with. I figured it might be some sort of driver issue since I ran a whole battery of diagnostics and everything came up clean, but a reinstall of Windows hasn't helped.

This is the first time we've bought from Dell, and it's probably the last time we ever will: the problem occurred more or less right out of the box. They did offer to make an exchange, but only after some painful hours with tech support assuring them that I tried every possible solution.

Also, hey TGQ.

dessgeega · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject:

hey six.
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dessgeega · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject:

so yeah, this is a computer overheating problem. i have a box fan pointed at my computer right now, and it's fine. i moved the fan last night, while my computer was shutting down, and instantly got the error screen. so i guess the mystery's solved!
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

It would be very much worth it to see if your case fans are having issues or if there's some crud on the cards that's causing some sort of issue, since that would probably be better in the long run than just running an outside fan at it.