Persistant IRQL Not Less Than or Equal to BSODs at start up

Hey folks,

I have, almost since I got my whitebook back in January. After about a month of error free operation, I began to see persistant but not constant BSOD of the IRQL Not Less Than or Equal to Errors.

It was pretty inconsistant and always happened when I didn't have time to address it, but I finally got some time to dig a little deeper yesterday and thought this might be helpful to others.

As many of you probably know, IRQL not less than errors are typically driver related, though in some rare instances they can also be hardware related (I sure hoped it wasn't hardware).

Many of these errors will provide some useful information--for example:

Code:

STOP 0x0000000A (0xBFD14AAC, 0x000000FF, 0x00000000, 0x8000F67C)
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
***Address 8000f67c has base at 80001000 - hal.dll 

Mine was occuring before the system had loaded enough to trap the error completely, so there was no reference to a given file (hal.dll in the above example) to help narrow my search

So a different approach was warranted.

People often wonder what the other numbers mean in a stop errors. For the IRQL blue screen (they are different on different error messages), the numbers following the error in the parenthesis are as follows:

• Parameter 1 - An address that was referenced incorrectly.
• Parameter 2 - An IRQL that was required to access the memory.
• Parameter 3 - The type of access, where 0 is a read operation and 1 is a write operation.
• Parameter 4 - The address of the instruction that referenced memory in parameter 1.

In my case, the tell tale clue was Parameter 2, which was:

0x000000000000000C

(64-bit)

OK, convert that from hexidecimal to a number and you get 12. What device used IRQ (Interrupt Request) 12?

The easiest way is to choose START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS and select SYSTEM INFORMATION

Within the System Information Tool, choose HARDWARE RESOURCES, then IRQs.

Interestingly, it was the Synaptics Touchpad.

Well, it dawned on me that I actually hadn't installed the touchpad drivers right away since I don't use the more advanced functions. Without those drivers, Windows will install basic mouse drivers for the touchpad so it works anyway. After about a month, though, I found the touchpad to be too sensitive and that is when I installed them.

The drivers I was using were the 64-bit synaptic drivers directly from the OCZ website. So, yesterday, I removed those drivers and set my laptop into a reboot loop to see if I could get the BSOD error to recur. I am happy to report I have not had an error since.

Given the cause was the 64-bit driver from the OCZ site, I have got to believe others are experiencing this problem as well, but am puzzled no one else has reported it. Perhaps, like in my case, the problem was not persistant enough to rise to the level of a post.

Either way, I thought I would share my findings as it may prove helpful to others.

 

awesome!

thanks for the post...

just got his lappy, i got 2 BSODs, but I think it's cuz I was OC'ing my quad core to 3.0Ghz.

I backed up on the OC to 2.6Ghz and its been stable for 48 hours.

I'll wait to see if I get more BSOD and this article will definately help if it starts to occur.

thanks again!

 

Nice find! Good research efforts there must have really been bothering ya

 

well, it was--but now I have something else bothering me...how come if we are all using the same driver, no one else was getting this same error?

Interestingly, the drivers on the Synaptic site are actually OLDER than the ones on the OCZ site.

OCZ's version are 11.1.8
Synaptics are 10.1.8

 

get the synaptics driver from laptopvideo2go, its v12.2.3.0

 

Been using 10.1.8 for three days without error...I may update, but there's really no pressing need. The only reason I install them at all is so I can turn down the sensitivity, otherwise I find my mouse jumping when a hit keys to hard