Random BSODs

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:10 pm

Since replacing the motherboard of my PC, (with the same one), I've been encountering random BSoDs under WinXP, usually saying DRIVER IRQL_LESS_THAN_NOT EQUAL.

Nothing in my system configuration had changed except for the motherboard. The settings, on the board have been restored to what they were before the replacment.

It occurs very randomly, usually under high memory use (when I multitask a lot), but it doesn't seem to be limited to that.

What do you guys think is the problem? I've taken out a stick of RAM to see if that may be the culprit.

Here are my system specs:

Soltek Qbic 3801A
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1024MB Samsung DDR 3200 RAM (512x2)
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB
Seagate 7200.7 200GB SATA Drive
Seagate 7200.7 200GB IDE Drive
NEC 2510A DVDR
ATI TV Wonder
Windows XP SP2

Temperatures seem normal enough, running at around 40C for the CPU.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 5:08 pm

I would recommend a new OS install. Even though the motherboard is the same, there could be different bios or firmware versions than the old one.

The error message indicates IRQ/driver problems. If you really want to try to fix it without re-installing XP, try updating all your video, sound, and motherboard drivers. After that, all other drivers. Is your system disk the SATA or IDE drive?

ChrisGwinn · Post by **ChrisGwinn** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 5:55 pm

Update the drivers for your motherboard and chipset.

The new motherboard may have had a later/different BIOS version. I'd also take a look in the BIOS and see if you can find anything off.

Look in device manager and see if you can find any unknown devices or devices with driver conflicts.

I've successfully replaced my motherboard under XP and didn't have problems.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:39 am

Same version, 1.5, was on both boards.
1.6 is available now, so I guess I should upgrade to that.

Laura · Post by **Laura** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:42 pm

We have just encountered this problem and found that SP2 is the problem. The data execution prevention of the 64 bit processor prevents Windows upgrading and causes crashes in IE. IE will work most of the time, but we found that it is impossible to do Windows upgrade unless SP2 is removed.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:13 pm

But it's not an upgrade. It's a motherboard swap. Same motherboard, same BIOs, same parts.

I already updated my video drivers and motherboard drivers. I've also upgraded the BIOS to the newest version, reset the ESCD, and put all the setting the way it should be.

Then I manually set my RAM timing (which seem to speed things up slightly).

This weekend, I will strip the rig down to bare components and have another go. This is frustrating!

By the way, would a faulty hard drive possibly cause this problem, even if it's not the primary windows drive?

My rig has a 200GB IDE drive and a 200GB SATA Drive along with a DVD+R.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:56 pm

ChaoZ wrote:By the way, would a faulty hard drive possibly cause this problem, even if it's not the primary windows drive?

Not likely. That particular error is usually associated with a driver trying to write memory at IRQL_DISPATCH that has been paged out. If you REALLY care, send the crash dump (should be in windows\minidump\*.dmp) to the email address in my profile and I'll take a look at what happened.

You've got too much memory to send me a full crash dump (which would be 1GB), but I think by default it's set to put a minidump of about 64Kb in the directory I mentioned (there might be more than one, you can send as many as you like).

docvego · Post by **docvego** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:39 am

ChaoZ wrote:
Then I manually set my RAM timing (which seem to speed things up slightly).

I hit pretty much the exact same problem recently. I found that Dropping my Memory Timing back to Advised levels stopped the problem.

I'd also suggest trying out this program:

http://www.memtest86.com

I found that when my ram was set to 199Mhz I got massive failures on Test 5, which deals with moving data all around within memory. When I set this back to default (166mhz) the errors went away.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:13 am

docvego wrote:
ChaoZ wrote:I hit pretty much the exact same problem recently. I found that Dropping my Memory Timing back to Advised levels stopped the problem.

Adjusting your RAM timings may or may not cause a problem like the one above. It's typically caused by a poorly written driver doing something it shouldn't be doing, when it shouldn't be doing it. In most cases it involves touching memory that's been paged to the disk at an elevated priorty where this isn't allowed.

I wouldn't expect this to occur simply because of the RAM timing changes. If the driver is using non-pageable memory, then the driver should be getting garbage data, not a page fault (which is *usually* what that error indicates).

My wife's computer spontaneously reboots every 3 days with the same error. Spending 35 seconds examining the crash dump uncovered the problem. Bad USB driver. One of her USB devices has a driver that is passing bad memory to the USB bus driver.

At that point, it's a process of elimination to discover the bad USB driver that's causing the problem. Unfortunately the problem was occuring in the interrupt service routine of the bus driver, so I wasn't able to use the stack trace to figure out who the offending party was.

Like I said to the original poster, if you want me to take a look at it, send me the .dmp file and I will run it through the debugger to see if it tells me what's going on. Sadly for me, solving BSODs is what I do for a living.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 5:51 pm

Just spent all of last night running a HD diagnostic on my secondary hard drive. It found some errors, but nothing major.

I've sent you an e-mail though the OO system RunningMn. I appreciate any help you can provide me.

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 7:37 pm

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Despite the kind help of RunningMn, I'm still stumped. Ripped the rig apart, put it together again. Replaced motherboard drivers, replaced graphics drivers, replaced sound driver, deleted and replaced usb driver.

Probably did more harm than good.