computer troubles

[shadow_archmagi]

Been getting a lot of BSODs. Between 1 and 3 a day. Error messages include:

BAD_POOL_HEADER
Tried to write in read-only area
DRIVER_IQRL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

I asked a few of my techy friends about the messages, and googled them, and was basically told

"It's probably either a bad driver or bad memory. Or a bad part; have you installed anything recently?"

Thing is, it's been doing this since the moment put the computer together. (Assembled it from parts bought on Newegg based on suggestions in another thread on this forum, over the summer.)

So today I ran Memtest86 for a few hours and let it run four passes which turned up zero errors. I also made sure all my drivers were up to date. (They were.)

I even went so far as to install one of those programs that checks if your drivers are up to date, just to be doubly sure. It said they were.

So I went to try looking at the dumps to see if maybe that would shed more light on the problem only to find that for some reason, despite the fact that crashes have been a regular feature since June, the minidumps are all from in between 8/22 to 10/25, with nothing older or more recent.

dear god what am I dealing with what should I do...

[factotum]

Two things:

a) Just because Memtest reports everything is OK doesn't mean it is. If Memtest reports an error you can reasonably be sure there IS one, but not the other way round. My usual test for RAM is to find (or make) a really big file (one that's about the same size as the installed RAM), make a copy of it, and then use the FC command from a command prompt to do a binary compare of the two files--if the files have random single-bit errors then you likely have bad RAM.

b) Just because it's been doing it since it was built doesn't mean it isn't a faulty part--sometimes they come faulty from the factory, so you simply can't discount a hardware error. I would ask why you've left it this long to worry about it if this has been happening since you got the machine, though!

[KuReshtin]

Been getting a lot of BSODs. Between 1 and 3 a day. Error messages include:

BAD_POOL_HEADER
Tried to write in read-only area
DRIVER_IQRL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

I asked a few of my techy friends about the messages, and googled them, and was basically told

"It's probably either a bad driver or bad memory. Or a bad part; have you installed anything recently?"

Thing is, it's been doing this since the moment put the computer together. (Assembled it from parts bought on Newegg based on suggestions in another thread on this forum, over the summer.)

So today I ran Memtest86 for a few hours and let it run four passes which turned up zero errors. I also made sure all my drivers were up to date. (They were.)

I even went so far as to install one of those programs that checks if your drivers are up to date, just to be doubly sure. It said they were.

So I went to try looking at the dumps to see if maybe that would shed more light on the problem only to find that for some reason, despite the fact that crashes have been a regular feature since June, the minidumps are all from in between 8/22 to 10/25, with nothing older or more recent.

dear god what am I dealing with what should I do...

Run a hard drive test.
Bad pool caller and IRQL not less or equal is usually a software problem caused by faulty sectors on the hard drive so that the OS can't read the drivers.

ONe very decent hard drive test is the Hitachi DFT (http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT) where you can download the file as an ISO and create a bootable CD, which helps when the OS is inconsistent.

Some machines also have a hard drive diagnostics test in the BIOS.

[Dada]

Is there any pattern in when the BSoDs occur? When using a certain program, when playing games or does it occur even when the computer is idle?

[shadow_archmagi]

Is there any pattern in when the BSoDs occur? When using a certain program, when playing games or does it occur even when the computer is idle?

No pattern, besides that it didn't like Utorrent, I found one week. Except that then later, when I wanted it to crash so I could show an engineer friend the BSOD, it ran flawlessly for sixteen hours, so, you know, probably was just a coincidence.


Run a hard drive test.
Bad pool caller and IRQL not less or equal is usually a software problem caused by faulty sectors on the hard drive so that the OS can't read the drivers.

ONe very decent hard drive test is the Hitachi DFT (http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT) where you can download the file as an ISO and create a bootable CD, which helps when the OS is inconsistent.

Some machines also have a hard drive diagnostics test in the BIOS.

Tried to run CHKDSK, but it crashed either during the test or after it; either way the results ended up being lost. Left it with said engineer friend, he said that the crash had finally left a file dump so he was going to look into it

[Toastkart]

Although I have no advice regarding the other problems, last year I did have a problem with DRIVER_IQRL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO that turned out to be a rootkit and a series of viruses that were masked by it.

I used root repeal to get rid of the rootkit itself, then my virus scanners handled the rest with no trouble.