Nvidia 81.95 driver XP32 Issues ?

[ikonia]

Hi all,

After many problems with a once stable machine,

I appear to have found at least one key problem.

I'm using XP pro 32, along side an BFG Nvidia 6800GT OC

This used to run fine, however scince I've done a rebuild (all hardware out apart from disks/video card) my machine appears to have lost stablity and has the famed IRQ_IS_LESS-THAN_EQUAL_TO error.

I only start to get this after I've installed the Nvidia 81.95 drivers.

While the machine is running with standard VGA drivers -its not a problem, but as soon as I install the nvidia drivers, I start getting the random blue screens/resets.

This is the first thing I've done after a fresh install.

Has anyone else had problems with these drivers.

I asumme I could also be having a problem with my motherboard chip / agp controller drivers, in that because I've not installed them yet, the nvidia card could have a problems using the windows stock ones.

[chinny]

Worth checking that nothing else is on the same IRQ as the gfx - i.e commonly PCI slots 1 or 5 and if so move them somewhere else. Just use device manager to check it.

[shaithis]

Do you have an X2 CPU by any chance?

[ikonia]

nothing sharing the same IRQ - as nothing else is physically in the chassis at this time, and nothing is ported in Device Manager.

I've not got an X2, I've got an FX55.

The problem may not be the driver, but it does look like it due to this happening straight after the driver install.

[chinny]

Have you tried the latest chipset drivers before adding the gfx drivers?

[ikonia]

perfect advice.

the chipset driver was at fault, and so was I, I'd actually installed the wrong components of the chipset driver.

installed the correct chipset configuration, and resintalled the nvidia drivers, and it looks spot on, no problems so far.

As a side issue my ram wasn't getting enough power either which I think was causing a slight red herring, which is also fixed

thanks for the input

[Paul Adams]

Worth checking that nothing else is on the same IRQ as the gfx - i.e commonly PCI slots 1 or 5 and if so move them somewhere else. Just use device manager to check it.

Quick FYI:
The bugcheck is "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" - this is not indicative of a hardware IRQ problem/conflict, but a kernel-mode driver misbehaving.
IRQ != IRQL

Microsoft KB on debugging STOP 0xA errors

Best troubleshooting approach for bluescreens starts with:
1. What hardware did I just change or add?
2. What driver did I just update or install?

In some cases you will already have a misbehaving 3rd party driver, but through sheer luck it is not causing any problems until you install extra drivers, and these new ones appear to have caused the crash (as in this case) but in reality they are the victim of the original driver.
Classically this is an overrun/buffer overflow - driver 1 writes outside of its space and over memory locations which are used by driver 2, residing right next to driver 1 in memory.
Driver 2 comes to execute some code (which is now corrupted), the code may be interpreted as null pointers, or pointers to incorrect memory addresses and the kernel bluescreens the machine to protect data integrity - reporting that driver 2 was the naughty process.

Despite the tinfoil-hat misonception that Microsoft record every scrap of personal data from your machine the second IE loads up, submitting to us the anonymous details of bluescreens and application crashes (via Dr Watson) allows you the possibility to get an instant online crash analysis via oca.microsoft.com
If your crash has been encountered by a number of other people then you may have hit a known and resolved issue, and a solution can be given to you.

[ikonia]

as always Paul, sound advice.

Made a note of this, and looking back on my problems this sort of makes pretty much exact sense.

thank you

[chinny]

You live and learn - thanks Paul
Found a good Technet about Common Stop Messages - might be interesting / useful for someone -
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...d_stp_hwpg.asp

Glad it's sorted.