Question BSOD: "IRQ Driver Not Less, etc. ?

Thomas Mendip

Prominent
Jul 8, 2022
6
0
510
The problem: BSODs with irq less than, etc.

The system:
Corsair i7500 Gaming PC
i9-14900k,
Z90 motherboard,
RTX 4090 GPU
64 gigs DDR5,
1000 watt ATX 80 power supply,
Windows 11 Pro

And yes, this SOB cost $4,000, and I’ve had it for a whole 10 days, which is why I’m so hacked off about this.

When I first got it, the first thing I did was a windows update. That was the first crash. Then they kept coming. Contacted Corsair customer support; it came down to a whole new, complete Win reinstall.

But, when I got the flash drive inserted and tried to reboot, it crashed again.

So, I was left with only one option—the reset this pc, but when I did, I used the option to download the files from the cloud, rather than trust the ones on the pc.

That worked. I could plug and unplug usb flash and hard drives without a problem. So, I had two hard drives installed and transferred whole terabytes of files to them.

All was well. (Remember, when things seem to going well, that means you’ve over looked something.)

With only Vivaldi browser running, I took a nap. And when I woke up, What Crashed recorded two BSODs, same irq driver crap, within half an hour. So, I tried experimenting with plugging and unplugging usb flash and hard drives. And it crashed every time.

Today, it’s stable, but that’s because I plugged in the hard drives before booting up.

What ever this is, it’s occurring on the instance of plugging in or unplugging flash drives or usb drives. I also have a wireless Logitech keyboard and camera, neither of which seem to cause problems.

I’ve tried the usual—scannow, dism, checked device manager for those yellow asterisks. (What the hell good is device manager? You could have a hard drive melted down into a pool of molten metal, sitting on your desk next to the keyboard and device manager would still say “this device is working properly”.) According to the system, every thing is peachy keen!

So, any idea how I should proceed? I should mention that What Crashed shows an incident on March 25, which was before I even received the machine. Specifically: On Mon 3/25/2024 8:42:00 AM your computer crashed or a problem was reported

Crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\LiveKernelReports\WATCHDOG-20240325-0842.dmp (Kernel memory dump)
Bugcheck code: 0x193(0x804, 0xFFFFFFFFC0000001, 0x108, 0xFFFFF8002C9BCFE0)
Bugcheck name:VIDEO_DXGKRNL_LIVEDUMP
Bug check description:A livedump triggered by dxgkrnl occurred. You may have problems with your graphics driver or hardware.
Analysis:This is a video related crash.




(Is there something happening in the pc industry that I don’t know about? I first got a pc from Amazon in March. I think the brand name was Yuyian. I spent a week going back and forth with them before they realized I was right, and the secondary hard drive was defective. So, I got a refund and bought a Corsair. Corsair’s reputation is generally good. Then, over the course of the next month, I got four more hard drives for various reasons, all western digital—allegedly the most reliable. Two of them were defective and had to be replaced. Now, if you count the hard drive in the pc I sent back, that’s five hard drives in one month, three of which were defective. That’s a 60% failure rate! Sixty percent!!??)
 
99% of the time I see Direct X mentioned in a BSOD report I know the cause is the GPU drivers.

This is a video related crash.
who crashed agrees.

Try running DDU in safe mode, remove Nvidia drivers, boot back into normal mode and reinstall latest drivers

Now, if you count the hard drive in the pc I sent back, that’s five hard drives in one month, three of which were defective. That’s a 60% failure rate! Sixty percent!!??)

what make/model PSU? I assume its a corsair in a corsair PC, but worth a guess. It might not be the drives fault. Bad PSU can reek havoc on storage.

Since you ran whocrashed:
  1. Open Windows File Explore
  2. Navigate to C:\Windows\Minidump
  3. Copy the mini-dump files out onto your Desktop
  4. Do not use Winzip, use the built in facility in Windows
  5. Select those files on your Desktop, right click them and choose 'Send to' - Compressed (zipped) folder
  6. Upload the zip file to the Cloud (OneDrive, DropBox . . . etc.)
  7. Then post a link here to the zip file, so we can take a look for you . . .
 
Last edited:
99% of the time I see Direct X mentioned in a BSOD report I know the cause is the GPU drivers.


who crashed agrees.

Try running DDU in safe mode, remove Nvidia drivers, boot back into normal mode and reinstall latest drivers



what make/model PSU? I assume its a corsair in a corsair PC, but worth a guess. It might not be the drives fault. Bad PSU can reek havoc on storage.

Since you ran whocrashed:
  1. Open Windows File Explore
  2. Navigate to C:\Windows\Minidump
  3. Copy the mini-dump files out onto your Desktop
  4. Do not use Winzip, use the built in facility in Windows
  5. Select those files on your Desktop, right click them and choose 'Send to' - Compressed (zipped) folder
  6. Upload the zip file to the Cloud (OneDrive, DropBox . . . etc.)
  7. Then post a link here to the zip file, so we can take a look for you . . .
Ok, zip file available here: https://mega.nz/file/ZDYzXQZC#rgIZVERuOdBU9yJyFhq4Sw7qdFeQyZfEldmTd_9sWCk
I'm working on the gpu driver thing.
 
The curious part is that the bsod seems to be triggered by plugging in a usb hard drive and some times a flash drive.
I say sometimes because I just did a repair reinstall to see if that would do any good.
The moment I plugged in a usb hard drive, it crashed.
But when I reboot, the drive is there and it functions perfectly.
 
I would agree regarding the graphics card/driver too. However, there is a known instability in the i9-14900 (and in the i9-13900 too). See these links...

https://community.intel.com/t5/Processors/i9-14900k-dx12-games-crashing/m-p/1554759
https://community.intel.com/t5/Proc...ue-with-proc-I9-14900K-crash-BSOD/m-p/1574516

Most motherboard vendors have issued a Beta BIOS update to mitigate these issues, I'd take a look to see if your motherboard vendor has done so. I'd also advise getting on the Intel forums and add your voice to the chorus of complaints.

Note: I'm not claiming that this IS your issue but you should certainly be aware of it.
 
Well, I uninstalled the old and installed new gpu drivers.
No effect.
I just discovered this curiosity--a usb hard drive will cause a crash when plugged into the usb ports on the top of the machine.
But they work properly when plugged into the ports on the rear of the machine.
Go figure.
 
i see a lot of reports of USB problems with Z790 boards.

Strange front port USB reacts that way. they both controlled by the same chip? wonder if its a physical fault on case. Do they work with other USB devices?

USB and GPU are both controlled by the same controller on the PC... curious, what USB items do you have? Anything old?

those bsod don't blame Nvidia
dump results

File: 042424-9109-01.dmp (Apr 25 2024 - 01:26:26)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (D1)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for Netwtw14.sys
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 44 Min(s), and 00 Sec(s)

File: 042424-8984-01.dmp (Apr 25 2024 - 05:26:38)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (D1)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for Netwtw14.sys
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 01 Min(s), and 08 Sec(s)

File: 042324-9781-01.dmp (Apr 24 2024 - 09:14:28)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (D1)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for Netwtw14.sys
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 1 Hour(s), 22 Min(s), and 37 Sec(s)

File: 042224-8968-01.dmp (Apr 23 2024 - 11:36:01)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (D1)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for aswStm.sys
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 1 Hour(s), 25 Min(s), and 04 Sec(s)

3 of them are your Intel network drivers. One is Avast...

The aswStm.sys file is a part of Avast anti-virus. You have a few choices: 1. Make sure you have the latest updates for Avast and Windows. 2. Uninstall and re-install Avast. 3. Uninstall Avast (at least temporarily until we figure out why you are crashing). The Avast homepage can be found here: https://www.avast.com/



Mar 11 2024Netwtw14.sys
they not that old
newer ones might be these showing here under LAN - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-Z790-P-WIFI/support#driver

I ran it to find out motherboard Make/Model
PRO Z790-P WIFI - appear to be about 5 BIOS behind - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-Z790-P-WIFI/support

I would be tempted to run this and check ram
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
 
Last edited: