XP problem with dual boot

XP occasionally displays a BSOD saying a problem has occurred and windows will shut down to prevent damage to your computer. Then it restarts. It's very annoying because it can happen at any time. How can I fix this? Thank you.

 

control panel->advanced->system restore and restart->UN.check "automatic restart"-> apply

next BSOD u would then see some error msg and code, then one can go from there

cheers ...

 

qhn,

Thanks for the tip. It happened again. The BSOD said:

A problem has been detected and windows will shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

What does this mean? Thanks again.

 

you are dual booting eh what are the two operating systems that you run? and are they both in separate partitions?

the error can be quite vague, it could be a hardware error or could be a program you recently installed that runs as part of your system. so any recent programs you installed before this started?

 

I have Vista and XP on separate partitions. It does say something about a possible hardware problem. I installed NHC recently. I will remove it and see if it has anything to do with it. There is another thing. I don't like the default XP appearance so I change it to the widows classic look. But it changes back to the XP look after every restart. Weird, huh? What program could cause this? Maybe whatever is causing the BSOD is also causing the appearance change.

 

I would say from my experience with BSOD over the years that IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is almost always a driver issue somewhere on your computer (some people will say it is the CPU overheating but this was never the case with me). With my last notebook I used to sometimes get a BSOD 3 or 4 times in one day! until I eventually traced down the problem which was my display driver. You should also run memtest and check for faulty memory as sometimes this can also attribute to a BSOD. Other devices on your computer can also cause this error, I have even heard that the logitech mouseware driver can cause random BSOD.
What you need to give us is the "technical information" that is usually on the bottom of the BSOD. It will usually be a .sys file or .inf, .dll etc file, this is the file that is linked to the BSOD.

BSOD can be sometimes very difficult to diagnose because microsoft's error messages are very incoherent

 

I got this error back when I had an issue with either a SATA or IDE cable in my desktop PC. it used to come loose and end up causing the BSOD when I tried to access that drive. so yeah it is hardware and a driver can cause the hardware to not function properly