I'm getting BSOD on a w2k3 machine either during startup (before the mouse cursor or CTRL-ALT-DEL login has appeared), or if I'm lucky enough the machine boots, but sooner or later the same BSOD appears.
The message is :
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
I haven't been able to get the Stop Code as the screen disappears too quickly and it reboots (it never dumps the core). Pause isn't holding the blue screen.
Event Viewer is showing no unusual activity immediately prior to the crash. The services being started and activities taking place etc. are wildly different between crashes.
The Bootlog indicated that one crash occurred after bluetooth drivers were loaded. I didn't need those, so removed them, but the problem persists.
I suspected memory. There are 2 x 512MB simms in 2 slots. I removed each one from either slot, and booted with only half the memory. I also swapped the slots for both sims, and also tried one at a time. In all cases the BSOD continued to occur (mostly at boot). I feel this rules out bad memory since I find it highly unlikely 2 memory modules and/or 2 slots would go bad at the same time.
I did however run memtest, and it reported bad memory -- could it be the memory controller module on the mainboard?
No new drivers or applications have been added to the system prior to this problem starting. The machine has been running for 5 years without much incident.
I have done a complete system cleanup, scandisk (full), reg-check, checked CMOS settings, and removed a lot of old apps and junk in the hope of tuning it all up. I've also removed CD-ROM drive (not used much), reinserted the hard-drive in it's IDE slot, unplugged and plugged everything back in several times and physically cleaned it's innards. Checked fans are all working.
Problem is persisting!
Try this Microsoft Article on troubleshooting stop errors.
I can't know for sure, but IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL has always been a hardware conflict or driver problem for me. Boot it in Safe Mode and see if you can get it to crash. If it BSODs in Safe Mode, it's probably a hardware problem. If it doesn't BSOD in Safe Mode, it's probably a driver issue.
Also, how did you uninstall the Bluetooth driver? It's possible that an application or driver uninstaller actually left the driver running. If possible, check Device Manager (View-Show Hidden Devices) to see if you can determine which .SYS file(s) were included in the Bluetooth driver. You may also be able to extract (but not install) the original driver to see which .SYS files it includes. Once you know the name of the driver file(s), try to see if it still exists on the server. You may be able to disable the driver from Device Manager, but I have had to go as far as renaming the .SYS driver file in Safe Mode to prevent a driver from loading.
The next thing I would check is the CPU. An overheating CPU can cause all kinds of strange errors. If you have another box with the same CPU, swap them out.
Also, you might want to replace the CPU fan and the heat sink compound. I know you said the fans were all spinning, but the heat sink might not be making good contact with the CPU.
On topic with the CPU, i've seen a dust layer build up between the top of the fins on the heatsink and the fan, taking the fan off and removing the dust has been the fix of many servers that are spontaneously rebooting and crashing.
did you read your dump file? find your dump file and then process it through microsoft debug tool and it will give you the possible driver or item that is causing bsod. if you are not sure how to post back.gd
you can see the irq value under device manager
Problem solved.
The fact that it would BSOD in Safe Mode only when Network Support was enabled let me to suspect the network card. Sure enough without the network card plugged in it ran fine. Furthermore after I upgraded the Network Card drivers the the latest version the problem has gone away. So it was software related all along. I suspect the old drivers had been corrupted in a minor way or the network environment had changed in someway causing a bug in the old drivers to manifest.