BSoD: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Blue Screen of Death errors occur because of fatal errors that occur during the operation of your computer. One of the most common Stop errors is the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. It’s stop error number is 0×0000000A. According to Microsoft,
this Stop message indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver attempted to access a memory address to which it did not have permission to access. The most common cause of this error is an incorrect or corrupted pointer that references an incorrect location in memory. When it occurs in kernel mode, it generates a STOP 0×0000000A message.
What does this mean?
What this means is that there is a program on your computer that is not behaving well. It says here that the stop error is generated when this misbehavior happens in Kernel mode. What this indicates is that chances are that this program which is misbehaving is a device driver (as most applications don’t run in Kernel mode). As soon as you see this error, you should think what is it that you have changed recently in your computer – did you install a new hardware; did you update a device driver; are you trying to update your OS?
How do I solve this?
There are 4 steps that you can take to solve this issue, each harder than the previous one, so here we go with the easiest:
- Reboot: Simply reboot your computer and pray that it was a one time problem. There are times when this can happen. If the error never appears, then you are home free. However, if it appears again then proceed to Step 2.
- Driver Problem: There is a problem with your hardware/software. Let’s try the software first. Try to recollect if you have updated a driver or installed a new hardware (in which case move to Step 3). If you have installed a new driver, or updated a driver, or installed an new software, then you should boot into Safe Mode (by pressing F8 during the bootup process). This will load Windows with the least amount of drivers installed. Now, uninstall any new driver or software, then try booting normally. If your problem goes away, then you need to get in touch with the manufacturer for the latest version of the software/driver. Of course, the problem may not be gone. Let’s look at Step 3.
- Hardware Elimination – Open your computer and remove all hardware except the basic (remove your sound card, modem, etc. but leave the video card). Go into your BIOS and restore factory defaults. Now boot your computer (it should boot fine, else go to Step 4). Next thing to do is to re-introduce all the hardware that you removed one by one. To do this, power down your computer and add one hardware (printer) and then power up and check. Keep repeating the cycle, until your computer crashes again.When it does, the last piece of hardware that you put in is the culprit. You will need to find the latest drivers for this piece or replace the hardware all together.
- Microsoft Support – if nothing works, then your best bet is to contact Microsoft Support.
There are advanced approaches as well (which would allow you to debug the output of the blue screen in the hope for figuring out the exact error) but these are beyond this article, and might be a topic for another post.
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