BSOD: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL caused by ntoskrnl.exe. Dump files linked.

[MortenJGL]

Hello people at Tom's Hardware.

This is my first post here and my first plea for help with a BSOD problem.

From similar posts I can understand that you need the specific .dmp files to really be able to help so I have zipped 7 files from yesterday and today and linked them here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ct3dn15hyzjiqgw/dumpfiles.zip?dl=0 .

In further information. My computer has had issues for months now, and I haven't been using it as a result.

• 
  ■ It takes forever to boot (I have now reduced startup items, which has helped a bit).
  ■I'm not sure when it started, but it has become very slow.
  ■I think there is a defective harddrive. It was secondary so I formatted it, and then disabled it as I was still getting messages about a faulty harddrive. I have three drives in total. Two are identical so I have not unplugged the faulty drive as I do not know which one it is, physically.
  ■It will often freeze up with 100% CPU usage for no apparent reason. This may happen while simply browsing local files. It also seems to happen when left idle or doing some time consuming task (like virus scan).

I am cleaning it up, deleting stuff, uninstalling programs, and extracting important data in preparation for a reinstall of windows.

I hope this is sufficient information. Thank you.

 

[GameFreak01048]

Hello!

Yes it seems as though you are having huge problems with your HDD, if I was you, as you already said you were doing, back up everything vital and reinstall windows.

If that doesn't solve your problem then you should try to get another HDD and install windows onto the new HDD, you can bag a 1TB drive for about £30 or $50

Hope this helps

 

[MortenJGL]

I have reinstalled windows 7 SP1 x64, and the computer runs better now. I have also plugged out the HDD I think is defective. After the reinstall, I still had problems. I needed to get a network adapter driver manually using a different computer. I found all-in-1 drivers for my motherboard. I disabled windows update to manually install an update file, because the automatic update did not seem to be going anywhere. After windows update had run, I used Driver Booster 4 to analyze and update 7 drivers I had no idea to even look for. Step by step my computer seemed to be getting better.

I was hopeful enough to install a game, and it ran for a while but then the 100% CPU thing happened. When it happens, the computer is too bogged down for me to be able to diagnose with Process Explorer. I had to use the reset button. After rebooting I opened Process Explorer and then tried to trigger the problem, but of course, when you want it to happen it doesn't. I even downloaded and ran the stress tester prime95, which pushed the CPU to 100%, but it didn't freeze up from that process. I left it overnight hoping to maybe find it in the 100% CPU state in the morning, with the diagnostics open. It had instead BSOD'd.

Here are the two .dmp files after the new windows 7 installation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qb17zmiix71dwl/newDumpFiles.zip?dl=0
The crashes appear to be different, but I suppose there could be some connection. The earliest one happened before the driver updating was done, the second one happened after.

I really hope someone with knowledge of crashes can figure out what is actually going on.