reformat your entire drive or put into a working computer and wipe it clean

Unfortunately, it could very well be a hardware problem, especially since you mentioned a power surge. Bad RAM is one hardware component that will cause the error you're getting.

Was there any more info in the error message, such as a "STOP" code? If so, knowing that would help us narrow things down.

I've managed to get into a command prompt and reformat the drive after a few hours of fiddling - all I get now is a message saying that the system disk is not valid - cant even get the recovery CD to work anymore so I can try and reinstall windows. Must admit I dont really know what I am doing with formatting and partitioning drives and cant even get the error messages back up to post them for you to check. Sounds as though I am a bit stuck now, hoped it would easy enough to clear the hard drive (not the original either - a replacement was bought) and at least try again.

Any ideas people or should I just buy a new one and salvage what I can to upgrade new purchase ?

Im having the same problem i have reformated about 20 times
i even reseted my bios by removing the battery.
but every time i try to install winxp it gives the error
I even got a new video card i unpluged every thing cd roms extra hard drive
it was just left bearbones just the primary hard and cd rom
and still giving me this bloodie

IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL .

please help anyone

New problems should be placed in a new topic of their own, rather than tacked on to the end of a long disused existing topic. But regardless, I'll offer the following advice in case anyone is reading this because they've arrived at it via a Search.

When the problem actually IS like this one (i.e. the error has occurred after power-related damage has occurred) it most likely indicates that other damage has occurred to the physical components in the system. That could be RAM, processor, motherboard or even power supply unit, or any combination of those.

If the problem does NOT resemble this one (i.e. no such damage has occurred) then it is most likely caused by faulty or mismatched RAM modules.

Any further discussion in a new topic please.

An Easy way to tell exactly (most of the time ) which component is bad download and burn a knoppix disk ( http://www.knoppix.net ) Yes I know it is linux. It will at least give you more error messages than windows will.

If the cd doesn't run at all the cd rom is probably bad which could be corrupting the windows install.

if it actually runs fine. use cf disk to completely erase the disk and see if tahta is where the problem is.

if knoppix stops loading, send us the last few lines saw and we will try to help.