[SOLVED] BSOD help: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

[PlutonicHades]

As the title says it's an IRQL error. I tried all the fixes I could think of SFC, CHKDSK, stress testing, BIOS update, hell I even did an upgrade-in-place repair. It only occurs when playing games, old games in particular. Never had it in a game published after 2012. Dishonored, Fallout 3, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines all bluescreen after about a minute. I can't say when it started because I hadn't played old games in months and it was there when I started again. PC performs as expected in everything else.

Specs
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
GPU AMD Radeon (TM) R9 390 Series
Motherboard ASRock Z97 Killer
Ram 18GB

Any help would be appreciated, I am at my wit's end. If there is any information you need that I failed to think of, let me know.

 

[Colif]

Can you follow option one on the following link - here - and then do this step below: Small memory dumps - Have Windows Create a Small Memory Dump (Minidump) on BSOD - that creates a file in c windows/minidump after the next BSOD

1. copy that file to documents
2. upload the copy from documents to a file sharing web site,
3. and share the link in your thread so we can help fix the problem

how does the 18gb of ram work? Did you mean 16gb or do you have extra sticks in there?

Try running memtest86 on each of your ram sticks, one stick at a time, up to 4 passes. Only error count you want is 0, any higher could be cause of the BSOD. Remove/replace ram sticks with errors. Memtest is created as a bootable USB so that you don’t need windows to run it

 

[PlutonicHades]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cIT6wzO6cN4GUNEyHoJfvM9I4OackknV/view?usp=sharing
Yeah, I meant 16gb of ram, I was just writing my post tired.
I have already run Memtest on both sticks, and in each slot, with no issues. I also tried switching out to two different sticks of the same model with no luck. That was before posting, just to double-check I ran them again today with no errors.
Thank you for lending me your time, I greatly appreciate it!

 

[johnbl]

running a game.
debugger shows that the graphics driver did not process something
then when it went to clean up the memory it used a bad memory address (the number 20)

this is most likely going to be a bug in the graphics driver and you should just look for a updated version.
a memory address of 20 is more likely to be part of a memory header to indicate the size of a block.
valid memory address would look something like this
fffff807`00400a02

your driver was:
amdkmdag.sys Wed Nov 4 18:39:22 2020
it looks pretty up to date but look for a update anyway.
Also, this same bug can happen if another driver writes data over the top of memory locations that they no longer own.
this is also very common.

you also have this driver installed:
npf.sys Thu Feb 28 17:31:24 2013
it is a filter driver used with winpcap what does network packet injection
used to cheat at games, steel passwords and accounts and to look at network packets.
you did not seem to have winpcap installed.

it would be a suspect driver for this case.
this driver is known to corrupt memory
ScpVBus.sys Sun May 5 14:31:26 2013
normally you would not get this type of corruption.

this would also be another suspect driver (for corruption)
zamguard64.sys Wed Aug 17 10:06:53 2016

you can download the microsoft tool autoruns to show what drivers you have running
then disable a driver by unchecking it and rebooting. this can allow you test to find out what caused the problem
or you can just remove the drivers if you don't need them.Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

you also have a overclock driver installed but you would never get this type of corruption but it could cause your hardware to miss a hardware event in the electronics. iocbios2.sys Thu May 28 13:42:10 2015

overall, i would remove any of these that you do not actively use. if you must have them then you would run verifier.exe and set the system to crash if a driver modifies data that it does not own. I would expect several of these drivers to crash the system if you used verifier.exe
if you do use verifier you must read up on it and be sure you turn off fastboot and know how to get into safe mode so you can run verifier /reset
to turn off verifier if you don't you can get into a fast bugcheck early in the boot process that some people just do not know how to get out of so they end up having to re install windows.

 

[PlutonicHades]

AMD wasn't the problem, but I did get the newest update. The WinPcap driver was part of Wireshark, which I removed. Zamguard was disabled, I didn't touch the ScpVbus.

One of these worked, either the WinPcap or Zamguard (My guess is Zamguard but I didn't test them individually) All of the games that were crashing instantly have been able to run nonstop for quite some time. I spent a long time trying to fix it on my own, and nothing worked. You're a legend. If it comes back I will probably return, though I pray it isn't necessary.

Thank you so much, I hope you have a wonderful day.