driver_irql_not_less_or_equal

My computer keeps on crashing and saying this error: "driver_irql_not_less_or_equal". I have windows vista, and I have had my laptop for over a year now. But now all of a suddenlty is is crashing like crazy, because of this error, and I suck at computers so I do not know how to use safe mode. Help please

Did you install any new hardware or software that might have coincided with this issue? How exactly is it crashing? BSOD then restart? If so turn off auto-restart and hopefully the faulty driver will be pointed out: 1.Click on Start and then Control Panel. 2.Click on the System and Maintenance link. 3.Click on the System link. 4.In the task pane on the left, click the Advanced system settings link. 5.Locate the Startup and Recovery area and click on the Settings button. 6.In the Startup and Recovery window, locate and uncheck the check box next to Automatically restart. 7.Click OK in the Startup and Recovery window. 8.Click OK in the System Properties window. 9.You can now close the System window. 10.From now on, when a problem causes a BSOD or another major error that halts the system, the PC will not automatically reboot. Rebooting manually will be necessary. The data on the blues screen will now pause so you can read it and look for the faulting driver or application. Also if you are getting a memory dump these can be analyzed if the above fails to diagnose.

Ok, thanks.

Ok the BSOD says Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory option such as catching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode. I recently installed a new anti virus software, could this be the problem? How do I check? I do not know how to use safe mode.

Hi Oh! Lonesome Me

Thats only part of the error message. Do you have the rest also?

You should also have seen a bunch of 0's, a number and a letter, like:

0x0000008A

That number will tell us were to look initially.
Sometimes the system can determine exactly
which driver is at fault, like Nv4_Dsp, which would
be a Nvidia Display Driver as a example.


Regards

Yea it was only a part of the message.

Hi again.

Instead of waiting for it to crash once again, you can download this tool

WhoCrashed

Scroll down to where it says "Crash Analysis Tools"

Download the Home free edition.
Install and run the program.
Click on the "Analyze" radio button at top left corner.
Report findings.

This isn't a surefire tool, it can't detect every error, but generally speaking, it will
detect most, if not all drivers, causing problems. If there is no crash-dump analysis
report, the fault might be hardware related.

Event-viewer may also shed some light.

To discover the type of Errors the machine has encountered recently, use Event Viewer.

• Go to Start - Run, type eventvwr.msc, then Press Enter.
• When the Event Viewer opens, there will be two panes.
  The left pane is for event categories (Application, Security, and System).
  The right pane is for event messages (Information, Warning, and Error). (We want to find errors.)
• Left-click the Application category in the left pane and check for any error messages in the right pane.
  You want to find the one(s) that occurred at the same time your system encountered the problem you have posted about.
• Repeat the previous step for each category, or until you find an appropriate error to investigate.
• Double-click the error message to bring up the information.
• Click the third button on the right side of the information window (copies information)
• Paste the information here

Regards