IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

ShepsCrook

[H]F Junkie
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Feb 16, 2003
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So I picked up an Acer Aspire V3-772G-9402 off of Craigslist for $240. The guy said the "Hard drive blew up." Fro what I could tell, he wasn't really a tech savvy kind of guy. Quickly that evening I figured out that he probably had an issue and either tech support or a friend, suggested he update his bios. Which changed it to UEFI instead of Legacy OR his hard drive was changed to the 2nd port. Either way, the laptop started to boot up. I reinstalled Windows to get rid of his data, and started to set the laptop up.

The issue is that the laptop will produce a bluescreen IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error occasionally. Usually when playing a game on it.

I've run memtest, hdtune, and whatnot, and everything looks good. I've even swapped out hard drives. The OS has been reinstalled even on the new drives and I still receive this error. BIOS is up to date, and the event viewer only shows that the laptop was shut down incorrectly, vs giving anything truly useful.

I can produce a minidump, bluescreen info etc if need be.

AcerAspireV3
 
Do you have some known working ram besides what's in the computer ? Swap it out. It's almost always a ram related issue even if it passes memtest.
 
Grab a program called BlueScreen view and see what it highlights in red. If nothing is highlighted then it's likely not a software issue. Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files.

I used BlueScreen View to get the bluescreen info. The issue is vague. NTOSKRNL.EXE + 142940. I'm sure that makes sense to someone, but not to me at least. And I have done some google searches, but most people say reload bios, or reload drivers, etc. Which I've done so. Downloaded new drivers from nvidia. etc.

Do you have some known working ram besides what's in the computer ? Swap it out. It's almost always a ram related issue even if it passes memtest.

I'm down to 1 stick of the original memory, which I'll be testing for a bit, then I'll throw in a stick of some other ram I have.
 
Acers are notorious for producing weird errors. I know one company that got so fed up with them that they have a total no buy policy on Acer brand computers.

Buying an Acer that the previous owner already had problems with... I'll just say good luck with your newly purchased problem source. At least it'll keep you busy :D
 
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors are caused by drivers 99.999% of the time, so my suggestion is to use only Windows Update drivers (those that will be found and installed from Windows Update) for any hardware that's detected and then update only the GPU driver if you absolutely must. The drivers included with the Windows installation media which tend to get updated from Windows Update as well are more reliable because of more stringent testing. Manufacturers test their drivers of course but they don't test them in nearly as many configuration assemblies as Microsoft does in their beta/WHQL labs so they tend to work better (speaking from experience here, so take it as such).

If you have hardware that doesn't get supported "out of the box" nor from Windows Update then use whatever the latest manufacturer (of the given device) provides (use the ones provided by Acer if you can since those are tested by Acer itself).

It's entirely possible that the laptop simply has a defect someplace that triggers the error since you're stating it's intermittent/random in nature. If everything else checks out in testing as you noted, it'll end up being a driver issue as pointed out almost every single time. If the issue crops up when playing a game it could be heat related as well - check the ventilation on the laptop, ensure the vents are clean and clear, shine a flashlight through 'em and check if you can see the fan blades, etc. Blow it out with compressed air, that sorta thing, possibly disassemble the laptop and redo the thermal paste as well.
 
I bought my g/f an asus rog laptop last summer and it get that error all the time.

Something is wrong with the nvidia mobile drivers and the windows update ones have the problem. She basically has to run laptop release drivers for it to work right. She has the 670m I think. I forget.
 
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors are caused by drivers 99.999% of the time, so my suggestion is to use only Windows Update drivers.
I couldn't disagree any more! Yea it SOMETIMES is driver related but in my experience its almost always hardware faults from instability. (Bad ram, cpu imc or board bios settings) This laptop i guess could be nvidia driver related
 
You're both right honestly. IRQ errors are almost always memory related; but that can be caused by faulty memory, overheating, badly written device drivers, software trying to write to memory that isn't writable for security reasons etc.

It's just a symptom that a particular subsystem is not operating properly. I've gotten this same error from pushing RAM too far, but the first time I encountered it was due to a bad wireless driver.
 
Yeah, I've found that the Atheros wireless adapter that was in this was riddled with driver issues, so I swapped it out quickly for an Intel 7260-N. No problems with those drivers since. So I put left 4 dead 2 on last night and ran that. Played for a bit (since about 7PM) about 2 hours. And then left it idle all night. I came back this morning and it's sitting there in the same spot I left it in game. So, the only change has been to 1 memory module. I've got new memory arriving today so I'm crossing my fingers.
 
I bought my g/f an asus rog laptop last summer and it get that error all the time.

Something is wrong with the nvidia mobile drivers and the windows update ones have the problem. She basically has to run laptop release drivers for it to work right. She has the 670m I think. I forget.

Agreed. Letting windows update mess with your drivers is about the best way to ensure something is broken.
 
1. Reseat the CPU and apply new thermal paste.
2. Reseat the RAM. Also, memtest 86+ is a pretty crappy program to find faulty RAM unless you don't mind running it for days on end. And even then, it may not show up any errors. A much, much, much better RAM testing program is HCI memtest.
MemTest: RAM reliability tester for Windows
 
I think that might be a PSU issue. Had that issue once when upgrading the video card and PSU did not have enough juice to keep it stable.
 
I think that might be a PSU issue. Had that issue once when upgrading the video card and PSU did not have enough juice to keep it stable.
this is a laptop...

Yeah, I've found that the Atheros wireless adapter that was in this was riddled with driver issues, so I swapped it out quickly for an Intel 7260-N. No problems with those drivers since. So I put left 4 dead 2 on last night and ran that. Played for a bit (since about 7PM) about 2 hours. And then left it idle all night. I came back this morning and it's sitting there in the same spot I left it in game. So, the only change has been to 1 memory module. I've got new memory arriving today so I'm crossing my fingers.
hopefully that's it. the ive seen Atheros cause this before and it can usually be fixed by playing with different driver versions but the intel is better anyways. hope it keeps working!
 
If it's a laptop then thermal issues is always the first suspect when gaming. Laptops are no good for gaming simply due to the physical challenges of having a light, compact and quiet setup. You can have any one of those in a system at any given time but not the rest two (without unstability or sacrificing performance).

If I were you I would dismantle the cpu and gpu heatsinks, apply proper thermal grease and reassemble it. I had a Fujitsu Siemens laptop that came from warranty repair with an improperly installed heatsink. It was running hot and blowing like a hoover before eventually crashing.

At the time I didn't have time to diagnose the problem so I just replaced it and left it sitting. Years later when my grandfather needed a laptop to write his memoirs I dismantled the machine to see if I could breathe new linux life into it. After reseating the heatsinks it was working like new again.
 
I'm still sticking with the driver issue (as he swapped out the wireless card and noted issues with the Atheros driver) since the OP reported the machine did stay up running a game overnight without any problems.
 
So after letting the laptop sit on and off IDLE in games yesterday. (when it wasn't idle, I was playing the games) with just 1 stick of memory, the laptop was rock solid. My new 2x8GB memory arrived and have installed that. Everything seems to be running normally. So, it's quite possible that the memory WAS in fact, bad. Despite memtest saying it was good. So I suppose I should start giving HCI a shot.
 
I don't know about that HCI program. I downloaded it just to check it out and it's a 32bit program and cannot test more than 2047MB of RAM per instance. For 32GB of ram you need to run 16 instances to test it all. It might be ok for doing a single stick test but if you are using 8GB sticks you'd still need to run 4 instances to test one stick.
 
I don't know about that HCI program. I downloaded it just to check it out and it's a 32bit program and cannot test more than 2047MB of RAM per instance. For 32GB of ram you need to run 16 instances to test it all. It might be ok for doing a single stick test but if you are using 8GB sticks you'd still need to run 4 instances to test one stick.

That's a bummer. I hadn't really looked into HCI much yet. Either way, the laptop is working, now it's just a matter of replacing the keyboard to get a working M key, and a 2nd power adapter. Since I just replaced the screen.
 
That's a bummer. I hadn't really looked into HCI much yet. Either way, the laptop is working, now it's just a matter of replacing the keyboard to get a working M key, and a 2nd power adapter. Since I just replaced the screen.

Man, you must be the kind that gets pleasure from just doing stuff. If you count the parts and manhours you spent your second hand Acer is probably now more expensive than a new one from the shop.
 
Man, you must be the kind that gets pleasure from just doing stuff. If you count the parts and manhours you spent your second hand Acer is probably now more expensive than a new one from the shop.

Well, I'm not reselling the laptop. So that's one thing, so my time working on it while watching a movie, tvshows, or while working my regular job is not really factored in. I do enjoy the troubleshooting sometimes and the feeling of fixing/refurbishing something.

So in the end. $240 for the laptop, $16 for the keyboard, $60 for 2x8GB ram, and $60 for a new screen. All in all, that's $376. Which I highly doubt I could find a laptop of equal performance (gaming) for that price. Even if I throw in a 2nd power adapter (Which I usually do), it would top out at around $410. Which since this laptop is going to my wife, and we're selling her Samsung Ativ Book 4 (i7-3xxxU, 8GB, 750GB 15.6") laptop for probably around $300-400 range, it's pretty close to a wash.
 
Well, I'm not reselling the laptop. So that's one thing, so my time working on it while watching a movie, tvshows, or while working my regular job is not really factored in. I do enjoy the troubleshooting sometimes and the feeling of fixing/refurbishing something.

So in the end. $240 for the laptop, $16 for the keyboard, $60 for 2x8GB ram, and $60 for a new screen. All in all, that's $376. Which I highly doubt I could find a laptop of equal performance (gaming) for that price. Even if I throw in a 2nd power adapter (Which I usually do), it would top out at around $410. Which since this laptop is going to my wife, and we're selling her Samsung Ativ Book 4 (i7-3xxxU, 8GB, 750GB 15.6") laptop for probably around $300-400 range, it's pretty close to a wash.
I value my free time as valuable (if not more) as my work hours so I always factor that in when deciding if it's worth to do something ;)
 
I value my free time as valuable (if not more) as my work hours so I always factor that in when deciding if it's worth to do something ;)

I think that some people believe their time is worth more than it really is. ;)

However, you do find posting in threads on a forum talking about the value of your time.... wortth your time.... o_O
 
I think that some people believe their time is worth more than it really is. ;)

However, you do find posting in threads on a forum talking about the value of your time.... wortth your time.... o_O

Yep, this stuff I do for fun.
 
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