chuckbradley Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 My son built himslef a computer with great success so I decided to let him build me one. Well he is having problems he doesnt know how to handle. We thought it was a bad hardrive since he can take the harddrive out of his computer and it works fine. We sent the one back and got the new one today. Guess that wasnt it. While installing XP , towards the end , he gets the blue screen of death. The error code is "IRQl equal less" He has it all wrote down and has been researching it without much luck. Anybody have any ideas or care to talk to him about which direction to go from here? I have a 1900.00 pile pf parts that are useless right now. I have to say he did have it running and then it started locking up. He was playing with overclocking it and it just kept locking up more often then it wouldnt even bootup. But it does run with anoher hard drive installed. The new one is a Western Digital and the one we swapped out was a maxtor?. Too many things to write it all here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lneel Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 My son built himslef a computer with great success so I decided to let him build me one. Well he is having problems he doesnt know how to handle. We thought it was a bad hardrive since he can take the harddrive out of his computer and it works fine. We sent the one back and got the new one today. Guess that wasnt it. While installing XP , towards the end , he gets the blue screen of death. The error code is "IRQl equal less" He has it all wrote down and has been researching it without much luck. Anybody have any ideas or care to talk to him about which direction to go from here? I have a 1900.00 pile pf parts that are useless right now. I have to say he did have it running and then it started locking up. He was playing with overclocking it and it just kept locking up more often then it wouldnt even bootup. But it does run with anoher hard drive installed. The new one is a Western Digital and the one we swapped out was a maxtor?. Too many things to write it all here. PM Sent... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 The first rule of thumb in these situations is to start narrowing the problem down - so, pull everything out of the machine that isn't absolutely necessary (ie, one hard drive, the motherboard and CPU, the minimum amount of memory, and maybe the CD-ROM (if you don't have an OS on the hard drive that works). If the problem still occurs, you've eliminated a bunch of parts. That said, if it runs just peachy w/ a different brand of hard drive, its possible that the disk controller (likely on the mobo) isn't happy with that particular model of hard drive, and you'll need to try a different model - or, perhaps better yet, a different brand. And... leave overclocking for the game machines built by people who like to fix their stuff You're not going to notice a difference if you're not in that category - and overclocking can cause all sorts of weird bus problems, etc - which could end up looking like what you've got. So, make sure that the mobo is actually back to factory default settings, and such, too... Random thoughts, anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckbradley Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Dave, Its not a off brand motherboard , its an intel MB with Intel dual core processor. But the drive controller thing sounds applicable since the harddrive in my sons computer runs fine in the new one , even under a stress test. The western digital we sent back gave us a blue screen in his computer also and it never locked up once since he built it. He is going to try what you and Lee suggested by taking everything out and adding back one by one. thanks, I will let you know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Dave, Its not a off brand motherboard , its an intel MB with Intel dual core processor. And Intel never makes mistakes or oversights in its design?? Or WD makes perfect hard drives?? The harsh reality is that, with as many people making stuff as there are, and as many standards exist that are many times only partially implemented by most manufacturers, PC hardware can be a quirky, hit or miss experience, even when building w/ top shelf, name brand gear.... So, don't take anything for granted when troubleshooting something like this - as the saying goes... "Trust no one!" and good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 $1900 to build one up yourself. Was it going to be a screamin' game machine, or just an everyday office type workhorse to run biz stuff and do surfin' and email on with the occasional digital photo, or two? If you wanted a totally screaming dream machine for high end gaming, that parts cost sounds about right, but for general use, it sound almost twice what it really oughta'. Maybe we are looking at a $1000 worth of display and sound system in which case, not awful, but $1900 in just the PC case alone sounds a bit much compared to just buying a fully prepped high end machine on sale from a good standard line manufacturer. Last year, we built up a custom rack case framed dual Xeon system for AVID Media driven video editing with a 500GB 320mbs Internal RAID storage array, a tri-headed NVidia display card with 512MB VRAM along with 4GB SDRAM for just about $1800 hard parts cost and we used Ultra SCSI drives all the way through it. What ya' got in that thang for nineteen hunnert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vluc Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 (edited) IRQL is usually associated with a memory problem. If you have 2 sticks, depending on capacity. Start with one then the other. Built my system last year - occasional BSOD and similar errors. Ran memtest, found a bad stick. Replaced - life is good. Memtest Edited January 5, 2007 by vluc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Does your sons machine accept the same sort of processor? If so you might try swapping them out to eliminate the possibility that the processor was cooked by the overclocking. Even if it was not I wouldn't bother overclocking these days. There was a time when you could get that 166mhz processor to run at 200mhz and really see a difference in the performance. That time was 1997. Nowadays processors are screaming fast anyway and you are not likely to need that boost in speed. Just like the guns you build you want your computers to be reliable or all the other work you put into them is for nothing. -ld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Yeah, I also forgot to mention the same thing Larry said about over-clocking proc's nowadays. Don't do it, it's a waste of time at best nowadays and a source of needless headaches at worst (as you may be finding out). Best advice here is to strip stuff down to min and slowly test to the bad part. Known good part swapping is a good way to isolate the area too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Overclocking ---yea nobody needs it...same as 18 round mags are fine.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRe Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Overclocking ---yea nobody needs it...same as 18 round mags are fine.... If you're a tinkerer and such, and need the extra squeeze out of the machine, go for it, but.... If you're not running gaming apps, you're not actually going to see it, in practice, cause Winblows is going to suck all the life out of your machine anyway... Trust me, I know Like the other guys said, we're at a point in the development of computer hardware now where there are multiple levels of caches in every part of the system, and the CPUs are so much faster than the rest of the system (memory, I/O), that making the CPU run a little bit faster just results in it waiting around for more cycles, unless you're beating the snot out of the CPU the whole time. Some bus speed tweaking becomes necessary to help the rest of the machine keep up - and that gets gnarly, as its usually a pretty sensitive area, depending on the chip set involved (like, on my Asus mobo, one of two RAID controllers is known to experience data corruption when you go tweaking bus speeds...). My machine runs at the BIOS defaults for all of the overclocking stuff.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckbradley Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Gues sit wasnt 1900. The monitor was for another machine although I did buy another 20" dell flatscreen so I will have 2 monitors on the system. What do you think I do while I am waiting for orders to come in? Got to have some game capability. Especially shooting games like medal of honor and call of duty. Of course you guys have me so busy there isnt much time for that like in th old days. Here is a list. There were a few other small things we had to buy also. Cables, modem(yes I send some of my orders out by fax from the computer), Etc. Austin had a concern the power supply wasnt enough. Is a 430 enough? 14-102-067 VGA SAPPHIRE 100186L X1950XT R 1 $269.99 $269.99 17-151-023 PSU SEASONIC|S12-430 RT 1 $94.99 $94.99 19-115-003 CPU INTEL|C2D E6600 2.4G 775 4M R 1 $308.00 $308.00 Intel (800)-628-8686 Please Verify Processor matches order Prior to installation. IMPORTANT: Always pack you CPU well for return. We will refuse your RMA if we received it as DAMAGED! 20-227-089 MEM 1Gx2|OCZ DII800 OCZ2P8002GK R 1 $219.99 $219.99 For Tech support call: 408 986 8400 or email support@ocztechnology.com 22-144-701 HD 250G|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD2500KS % 1 $74.99 $74.99 This item is serviced by the Western Digital. Please call 800 832 4778 for service. 24-001-088 MNTR SMSNG|LCD19" 4MS DVI 941BW 1 $219.99 $219.99 27-151-133 DVD_BURN SAMSUNG|SH-S182D RAM BK % 1 $29.99 $29.99 29-102-178 SOUND BLASTER|AUDIGY 2 ZS PCI OEM 1 $74.99 $74.99 Creative Labs (800)-998-1000 35-118-223 CPU FAN | ZALMAN CNPS 9500 LED 1 $63.99 $63.99 Subtotal $1,356.92 Tax $0.00 Shipping and Handling charge $27.82 Amount Paid $1,384.74 ANTEC CHAS FT NO P/S ALUM QUIET-4 5.25 7.35 2 12MM FANS Mfr Part#: P180 Page Part#: 779516 1 $95.54 $95.54 INTEL ATX MBD QC S775 PCIE-2X16 DDR2 SATA RAID GETH Mfr Part#: BOXD975XBX2KR Page Part#: 1161895 1 $250.94 $250.94 Order Sub Total: $346.48 Shipping Method: Ground Shipping Total: $34.41 Special Handling: $0.00 Tax: $0.00 ORDER TOTAL: $380.8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lneel Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Chuck, That is a great quality power supply. It is plenty of power. Now if you bought a $20.99 430W power supply that would be an issue as they are crap. Were you able to test without the sound card or DVD? Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckbradley Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Not yet, he had to go to bed and then school today. tonight when he comes home I am going to let him read all the posts and your PM. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcs Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Chuck, Your video card and the CPU is fast enough to play those games. +1 on don\'t mess with overclocking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Without seeing the process your kid goes through to install hardware and drivers and software etc. I will guess the Mobo is junk. Intel makes a crap board. If that is a SATA HDD it will not be recognized by the Win XP install without the bios upgrade.....so have your FDD connected and install the drivers during setup of XP and your SATA HDD will be recognized. Western digital is the shiznit for HDD's. This board has some documented bios issues as well as incidences of DOA from Newegg. A good 775 socket board is the Asus with the PCI-E and the Nvidia 650i chipset for half the price of the intel board. I also beg to differ on the quality of seasonic product and If you want to SLI in the future, 450W is not enough and is a low threshold wattage for todays hardware and possible future upgrades. OCZ makes quality PS with lifetime warranty. 600-700w is goot. Additionally the PS model that you ordered does not support SLI and has only one 6 pin molex PCI-E connector. I like the rest of your hardware selections except for the samsung optical (plextor preferred) and the saphire graphics card as its an ati chipset. IF you like direct -x games get nvidia reference boards, but if you like open gl go with the radeon crap. (I said I would never be back on here, but here I am ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 You just got the best PC build advice you are gonna' get here Chuck. Listen to Sandoz and if need be PM him for the proper way outa' this mess. If I wanted a custom build-up on a PC system, I would listen to him. I agree with N-Vidia being better for pure performance and that 460W just ain't enuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lneel Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 You just got the best PC build advice you are gonna' get here Chuck. Listen to Sandoz and if need be PM him for the proper way outa' this mess. If I wanted a custom build-up on a PC system, I would listen to him.I agree with N-Vidia being better for pure performance and that 460W just ain't enuff! Come on guys....this is an effort to help Chuck out not have a Ford vs. Chevy debate. For a system with a Core 2 Duo processor (which is 50% more efficient than a P4 D965) with 1 hard drive, 1 Optical drive and a single, not so power hungry video card, a quality 430W power supply is fine. Heck, a Dell XPS 210 with a very similar setup comes with a 275W power supply and I am sure Dell builds more PC's than any of us. He also stated he really has little time to play as we keep him busy. Lastly, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty are well served by a Radeon X1950,Core 2 Duo E6600, and 2 GB of 800Mhz RAM. Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 You just got the best PC build advice you are gonna' get here Chuck. Listen to Sandoz and if need be PM him for the proper way outa' this mess. If I wanted a custom build-up on a PC system, I would listen to him. I agree with N-Vidia being better for pure performance and that 460W just ain't enuff! Come on guys....this is an effort to help Chuck out not have a Ford vs. Chevy debate. For a system with a Core 2 Duo processor (which is 50% more efficient than a P4 D965) with 1 hard drive, 1 Optical drive and a single, not so power hungry video card, a quality 430W power supply is fine. Heck, a Dell XPS 210 with a very similar setup comes with a 275W power supply and I am sure Dell builds more PC's than any of us. He also stated he really has little time to play as we keep him busy. Lastly, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty are well served by a Radeon X1950,Core 2 Duo E6600, and 2 GB of 800Mhz RAM. Lee Now I remember why I left this portion of the forum. You totally missed the point(s) of my post. How you glean that this is a debate is beyond me and your faith in Dell speaks volumes. OUT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckbradley Posted January 6, 2007 Author Share Posted January 6, 2007 Sandoz, I think you may have hit it on the head although Austin is out with friends tonight. Promises to work on it tomorrow. We are going to try installing as you suggested and removing non essentials but we dont have many non essentials to remove., the quad was tempting but too much money. We talked about SLI and decided I wouldnt ever want to do that at least on this machine. I just need a workhorse machine that will do minor Pic editing for my web page, do order downloads and processing and is capable of some game play if theres time. I dont need an ultimate game machine. I wanted to be able to have several windows open at the same time hence the 2 monitors and the core duo processor. The reason I went with the intel MB is that my son put one in his machine last year and his machine has been flawless. He did offer the Asus as an option, the intel was my call thinking the intel processor and motherboard would be more comaptible but i am not an expert. I know you dont like most of what I have but since I already have it with your bios upgrade and method of setting up will it work for what I described? Oh yea, I dont think I will buy from newegg again. Before we opened the power supply we decided a bigger power supply would be better so I tried to exchange it,unopened, for a bigger supply. I was expecting them to have a similar exchange policy as I do. Full credit on the return for the exchanged product. I knew I would have to eat the shipping both ways but they wanted me to pay a restocking charge for an exchange. I figured it was going to cost me like 30.00 for the charge and shipping not mention the extra wait so I said hell with it and use it. I didnt think I had that much on this machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 (edited) Your components are good. Your mobo is the crux of your problem, just guessing based on reviews and technical forums i belong to. If you have to keep your mobo, thats too bad, because at 250 dollah, you can have twice the hardware without the headache at half the price. The vid card was way spendy as well and you can save money on an nvidia reference board with better graphics IMO. That said, my main point was to supply a fix for your existing intel product. Intel makes good chipsets and cpu's but their substrate stuff in terms of mobos and modems etc. must be farmed out cause they are notoriously glitchy. Sometimes their bios updates fail to fix the problem. What I could read up on in a short amount of time is that there is a problem with your SATA HDD talking with your mobo. The only way thats easiest for a new builder is to go through the install routine with XP Pro, and when it prompts you to add drivers such as RAID or any other (comes up quick, i think you press s ), that is when you supply it either the CD for the SATA drivers or on a Floppy. You can snag these off the Intel site (hopefully as they never have adequate or timely updates) but they should have come with the mobo or attempt a bios update if you can get to windoze. I would wait to get windows up and running, then update the bios, but do not do the clear cmos checksum if it is an executeable, as you will have to go back into the bios the reset your settings for boot, mem etc. Intel boards glitch and sometimes you get a good one, much like MSI or Abit. The rock steady board manufacturers are Asus and or Gigabyte . Also if you have the first revision board, that can suck, as Newegg will give you what it has when its been on the shelf the longest, usually revision 1 and not later updated revisions. Remember, alot of these boards came out of newegg dead to the world and no amount of troubleshooting will help you. Its better to send it back, replace it with a good asus board, lose $30 , then gain $125 on the refund and your pain ends. I dont think i recommended removing non-essentials. Just put it together and load the software. Always be GROUNDED when working with or handlling any of these components. Static discharge is 100's of thousands of volts and there is only 7 volts running through your hardware. Your vidcard is set up for SLI, for $50 bux more (when you save on the intel refund) you can have a compliant SLI power supply. Then when the games or software outpace your existing hardware, you can easily add another card, dump the conroe core intel CPU for a kentridge or quad core and the mobo can handle it. Oh, and the intel mobo you used last year is not this one..different north and south bridge as well as chipset, and possibly a different taiwanese substrate manufacturer, the kind Dell uses or Abit. I have failed to load RAID, ethernet and Sata drivers during the load of windows, and things just dont work if you fail to do that. Open the cd on another machine and see what drivers are on it, match it your mobo model and it will self load at the prompts. A qucik try might be , if you can get to windows right now, load the sata drivers from there. I dont know if you could even get to windows based on your previous post. (oh, your intel cd may have the bios drivers on it as well but not the updated ones, get the new ones on a floppy and try to load during the loading of windoze...Load=install) PM me if you need phone support. Edited January 6, 2007 by Sandoz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AustinMike Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 I don't usually care to jump in on computer problems because I work with them all day and don't want to see another one when I get home. I test system designs for a living, so I'm biting my tongue on some of the hardware comments. Rather than get into that, I'd offer up that if you're still having the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen o' death, that's a software bug, usually a crappy driver in my experience. Sometimes a BIOS setting can have bearing on it. Dave has a good suggestion about stripping down the system to bare essentials and then installing. Before proceeding, get software updates for EVERYTHING (BIOS, video, chipset, NIC, etc.) The software that ships will be long obsolete and the issues you're seeing may be already fixed. You also might try setting the BIOS to factory defaults after flashing it to a new version, just to be safe (F9 key defaults on Intel boards.) Also make sure you have the OS option set to XP. FYI, a little info on this error from Microsoft: Windows Driver Kit: Driver Development Tools Bug Check 0xA: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL The IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL bug check has a value of 0x0000000A. This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above. Parameters The following parameters are displayed on the blue screen. Parameter Description 1 Memory referenced 2 IRQL at time of reference 3 0: Read 1: Write 4 Address which referenced memory Cause This bug check is issued if paged memory (or invalid memory) is accessed when the IRQL is too high. The error that generates this bug check usually occurs after the installation of a faulty device driver, system service, or BIOS. If you encounter bug check 0xA while upgrading to a later version of Windows, this error might be caused by a device driver, a system service, a virus scanner, or a backup tool that is incompatible with the new version. Resolving the Problem If a kernel debugger is available, obtain a stack trace. To resolve an error caused by a faulty device driver, system service, or BIOS 1. Restart your computer. 2. Press F8 at the character-based menu that displays the operating system choices. 3. Select the Last Known Good Configuration option from the Windows Advanced Options menu. This option is most effective when only one driver or service is added at a time. To resolve an error caused by an incompatible device driver, system service, virus scanner, or backup tool 1. Check the System Log in Event Viewer for error messages that might identify the device or driver that caused the error. 2. Try disabling memory caching of the BIOS. 3. Run the hardware diagnostics supplied by the system manufacturer, especially the memory scanner. For details on these procedures, see the owner's manual for your computer. 4. Make sure the latest Service Pack is installed. 5. If your system has small computer system interface (SCSI) adapters, contact the adapter manufacturer to obtain updated Windows drivers. Try disabling sync negotiation in the SCSI BIOS, checking the cabling and the SCSI IDs of each device, and confirming proper termination. 6. For integrated device electronics (IDE) devices, define the onboard IDE port as Primary only. Also, check each IDE device for the proper master/slave/stand-alone setting. Try removing all IDE devices except for hard disks. Hope this is helpful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Bradley Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 ok I did download the bios update which i proceeded to try to iflash the update with a bootable cd. This failed so i switched the bios jumper to recovery and did the latest update and it was sucessfull. After all the I ran the Windows XP installation and it was unresponsive to F6 which allows the installation of third party drivers. So I still went ahead with the installation and it all worked out until the very last 5 minutes remaining where xp said it was "saving settings". the compuer simply froze atleast no blue screen of death this time. Tried installing again and same thing. In the bios control the computer does recognize the western digital hard drive though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 ok I did download the bios update which i proceeded to try to iflash the update with a bootable cd. This failed so i switched the bios jumper to recovery and did the latest update and it was sucessfull. After all the I ran the Windows XP installation and it was unresponsive to F6 which allows the installation of third party drivers. So I still went ahead with the installation and it all worked out until the very last 5 minutes remaining where xp said it was "saving settings". the compuer simply froze atleast no blue screen of death this time. Tried installing again and same thing. In the bios control the computer does recognize the western digital hard drive though. Nothing Happens when Pressing F6 During Windows* Setup to Load 3rd Party RAID Driver If you have enabled RAID, at the beginning of Windows Setup, you’ll see a prompt to “Press <F6> to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver”. When you press F6, it may appear as if nothing happened as a dialog box will not appear and you will not immediately see a prompt. You likely will not see any sort of dialog box appear at the time you press F6. Instead, later during Windows Setup, however, you will be prompted to insert the RAID driver floppy disk that came with the desktop board. If your not running RAID, disable it in the bios then install. Lockups can be power supply related...not enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AustinMike Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 Other random thoughts that come to mind...not sure what the board supports, but in BIOS try disabling ACPI and if there is an enhanced SATA mode enabled, try setting to Legacy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now