[Gilfindel]

My daughter's laptop has suddenly developed a "blue screen of death" symptom, although she swears she hasn't done anything to it recently. The specific notice is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, which I gather is typically a bad memory reference, or possibly a hardware fault. The dump includes the following data:
#0000000A, #00000000, #00000002, #00000001, #8286284c

I've reinstalled the audio and video drivers, and removed any suspicious looking programs, but no luck. We can boot into safe mode without the problem occuring. Her machine is a Compaq Presario C500 running Vista.

Anything advice you can provide is appreciated.

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if you can boot into safe mode its probably a bad driver and not your ram...

free ways to check your drivers
try the video card driver first

http://www.softpedia...DriverMax.shtml

http://scan.driverguide.com/scan.php

http://driveragent.c...n_step1.php?r=8

http://www.drivershq.com/

http://www.drivereasy.com/

some sites requires registrationlike this one,..http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/index.htm
it only takes a couple of minutes to register or if you don't want to register you can use bugmenot for the registration code...

[happyrock]

if you can boot into safe mode its probably a bad driver and not your ram...

free ways to check your drivers
try the video card driver first

http://www.softpedia...DriverMax.shtml

http://scan.driverguide.com/scan.php

http://driveragent.c...n_step1.php?r=8

http://www.drivershq.com/

http://www.drivereasy.com/

some sites requires registrationlike this one,..http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/index.htm
it only takes a couple of minutes to register or if you don't want to register you can use bugmenot for the registration code...

[Gilfindel]

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have Internet access while in safe mode, even with the networking option. The laptop is not getting an IP address from the gateway.

[happyrock]

check your device manager for any yellow ! or ?
use the computer your on and go to the laptops website...support section...download the network and video card driver then copy them to a usb flash drive or burn to a cd then put that in the non connecting computer then install the driver...reboot to normal mode and see if you can connect to the internet

[Gilfindel]

Unfortunately, I attempted to restore the laptop to a previous save point, and now it won't boot at all; it just hangs with a blank screen. I may be forced to reinstall Windows if I can't get it to come up. I'll post the status tomorrow.

[happyrock]

if you are forced to reinstall Windows do the full format...never use the quick option if it gives you the option
is all your data backed up...

[Gilfindel]

We have backups of all the essential items. It will actually boot up in normal mode, but of course immediately runs into the IRQL issue (even before the login prompt now), but it won't boot in any of the safe mode options. Unfortunately, I don't have the Windows recovery disks for this machine, so I'm dead in the water for the moment. It's an old machine, so I'm not going to lose much sleep over it, but it's irritating. Let's close this thread off, and I'll try again later if I get things recovered. Thanks.

[happyrock]

since you can boot up in normal mode lets test your ram...

Bootable Memory Test Diagnostics


What you'll need:
- a blank CD
- a computer with an internet connection where you can download a file, install a small program, and burn a CD (doesn't have to be the computer that you'll be testing).

1. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have built in diagnostics. Use them if possible, instructions are here: http://www.bleepingc...utorial146.html

2. Bootable memory diagnostic tests:

- Memtest86
Description here: http://www.memtest86.com/
Download the file from here: http://www.memtest86...t86-3.5.iso.zip You must unzip the file before you can burn (NOT copy) the ISO image to a CD.

- Memtest86+
Description here: http://www.memtest.org/
Download the file from here: http://www.memtest.o...6 -2.11.iso.zip You must unzip the file before you can burn (NOT copy) the ISO image to a CD.

- Windows Memory Diagnostic
Description here: http://oca.microsoft.../en/windiag.asp
Download the file from here: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/mtinst.exe Extracting the .exe file will allow you to save an ISO file onto your computer.

3. if you don't have a burning program that will burn .ISO files go here and get burncdcc ..a small FAST no frills iso burning program...


NOTE...do not put a blank cd in until burncdcc opens the tray for you

1. Start BurnCDCC

2. Browse to the ISO file you want to burn on cd/dvd ....in this case its memtest.iso

3. Select the ISO file

4. click on Start


make sure in the bios the cd drive is the first boot device....put the cd in the cd drive..boot your computer....
let memtest run for at least 2 hours...if you get any errors the ram is bad and must be replaced...if you have more than 1 stick of ram and it pases with no erors after 2 hours the ram is good but if you do get a error then test each stick individually