Blue screen crash. Computer wouldn`t restart Help!

[dita]

Following on from my post elsewhere. Scenario crashed with a blue screen error message. I`ve typed it out as best I could below---

"A problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT LESS_OR_EQUAL

If this is the first time you have seen this, restart the computer. If this appears again follow the instructions below-

Check to make sure new hardware/software is installed properly. If this continues disable or remove the newly installed software/hardware, bios memory options such as caching or shadowing.

Tech information-

STOP 0x00000001 (0x00000294 0x00000002 0x00000000 0xf9025231) NV4_mini.sys-address f9025231 base at f8ff1000 date stamp 4074b958"

then said something about dumping physical memory. At this point I switched the computer off (alt-ctrl-del did not work)

Upon switch back on, no joy. Leaving the computer for 5 minutes and I was back up. Upon booting up the following message greated me. "safe mode speed. press del to enter bios setup and correct cpu speed"

Needless to say, I was very apprehensive about this. entering bios, I couldn`t see anything refering to cpu speed. I just made sure everything was set to auto.

Anyway, (if anyones got this far ) does anyone have any suggestions? I`m sure it was to do with the WinSPMBT install. I had just installed it and run it, nothing else, no addition recent hardware etc.

Thanks for any help

[FJ_MD]

Maybe hyperthreading may cause the problem.

[dita]

Hyperthreading?

My system is a athlon 2800XP. Does athlon processors use hyperthreading?

Further system info is direct X 9.0c, 256mb ram, 120gig hard drive, windows xp service pack 2

[Mobhack]

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-261628.php
Would probably be worth a browse through

(from a google search on nv4_mini.sys)

nv4_mini.sys is what the error report was complaining about.

nv4_mini.sys is the core driver for Nvidia graphics cards, and apparently some releases were unstable, according to a quick skim through the google search results. So, I would look at downloading the latest drivers for your Nvidia card from thier website.

A search on DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in google brought up several reports such as
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=308429

You may want to have a quick google on DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
and also
nv4_mini.sys

Hopefully - you just had the bad Nvidia drivers?

Cheers
Andy

[FJ_MD]

Let me guess, do you have an NVIDIA video card?

[FJ_MD]

Yep! Mobhack took the point!

[Arralen]

You didn't mention which graphics card you're using. For some older cards, the latest drives are not necessarily the best ones, and they might not be the most stable ones, either.

I'm running 66.93 drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html
atm with my Fx5200 card, and it works just fine.


Not being able to restart for 5 minutes points to a thermal problem: either graphics card or CPU had to cool down before it initialized correctly again. Core driver crashing points to graphics card, while "forgotten" speed settings points to CPU not starting "correctly" and therefore set to failsafe speed (PCI bus set to 50 Mhz, etc.). I have, in rare cases, seen such errors which faulty memory chips or failing EPROM, too, so 'debugging' can get pretty complicated...
Was there any special beep code from BIOS during the failed startup attempts (provided you have the internal speaker connected to the motherboard, oc.) ?

SW

[TheDesertFox]

I suggest, as Andy already mentioned, switching to the latest official Nvidia Forceware.

Personally I´m using the 71.89 build on a FX 5950 Ultra card with DirectX 9.0c.

Works flawless for me.

cheers

Helge

[dita]

Hi,

Sorry about not mentioning what graphics card I`ve got. I`ve got a nvidia TNT2 32mb. A old card, that was in my previous machine thats never given me any problems in the past. The driver version is labelled as--
version-5.6.7.3, digitial signer-microsoft windows publisher.

I`ve looked around the links mentioned above, some posts suggest cooling (or lack of) like arralen suggests, as well as driver problems. No beeps heard.

[FJ_MD]

Have you installed the newest driver for your specific video card? If not, try this before all other.