Member Avatar for Mapley

My computer started bluescreening last night. It only happened once, and after restarted my computer, it was fine again, but today it's happened several times. It only blue screens when I'm watching streaming video with the winamp player.

The error message states that "driver_irql_not_less_or_equal"

It continues by saying basically that if it's the first time just restart and hope for the best. If not try uninstalling any recently installed software/hardware, and try disabling BIOS memory options like shadowing and caching (which I have no idea how to do).

Technical information: STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000008, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xF643EDCF)

ar5211.sys - Address F643EDCF base at F63EF000, DateStamp 40b788ac

It then proceeds to dump its physical memory and says to go get help elsewhere if I can't figure it out. Which I can't.

I have not recently downloaded any software or made any hardware changes.

I discovered that the ar5211.sys file is the driver for my wireless LAN adapter. I have no idea what the rest means.

Now, I disabled, enabled, uninstalled, and reinstalled my wireless drivers, to no avail. I also uninstalled/re-installed my winamp player. I also ran a full virus scan (which may be way off-base, but it can’t do any harm). I'm really not very familiar with this aspect of troubleshooting, but I did try to look up the problem, but there were a million answers to problems that varied slightly from one computer to the next.

It's a Toshiba satellite A70
Pentium 4 processor
Microsoft xp home ed SP2
448 MB of RAM
3.07GHz

I have also provided the image of the blue screen of death, to be extra thorough.

Any help would great greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Caleigh.

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Dani AI

Generated

The STOP 0xD1 that names a wireless driver file points to a kernel-mode driver problem under heavy network I/O, though bad RAM or disk corruption can produce the same symptom. Streaming video is a plausible trigger because it stresses the networking stack and any buggy driver. The goal is to separate “bad driver” from “bad hardware” and to reinstall a clean, matched driver the safe way.

  1. Boot Safe Mode to see whether the crashes stop; stability there strongly suggests a driver.
  2. Disable the wireless adapter (Device Manager or the laptop’s hardware switch) and test the same stream on a wired connection or with wireless off to reproduce the trigger.
  3. Uninstall the wireless device from Device Manager and remove its driver package, then reboot. Prefer the OEM driver for the Satellite A70 (Toshiba support) or the adapter vendor’s driver rather than generic driver packs. If old copies of the .sys remain after uninstall, move them to a backup folder before installing the new package.
  4. Run a memory check (Memtest86+ for several full passes) and, if present, test with one DIMM at a time as @Serunson suggested. Run chkdsk if the drive could be corrupt.
  5. Try an alternate player or a browser stream to rule out a codec/plugin interaction with Winamp. Also disable wireless power saving and any third-party wireless utilities that might conflict with the driver.
  6. If problems persist, collect the minidumps (C:\Windows\Minidump) and analyze with a crash viewer or WinDbg before replacing hardware.

Cautions: do not delete system files without a backup and avoid changing BIOS caching/shadowing unless explicitly directed by the vendor. This expands on ’s and ’s driver/update advice while combining ’s RAM check — following the sequence above will identify whether the fix is a driver reinstall, a vendor driver/BIOS update, or a hardware replacement.

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Member Avatar for Mapley

Does anyone have any input at all? I've still been searching for an answer, without much luck.

Member Avatar for bobbyraw

@ mapley
have you tried updating windows, then try getting the latest driver for your wireless card.
PS before u update deleted the file that causing the BSOD then run the lasted software update for the card

Member Avatar for Mapley

Thank-you for responding!

I did try updating windows and looking up the latest drivers (I probably did it wrong though because nothing appears to havwe changed).

I haven't tried deleting ar52100.sys though.

When I look up the file name, there are three copies in different places, how do I know which one to delete?

Screen Shot of the three files

Member Avatar for Suspishio

I think bobbyraw has the answer an expansion of which is located here:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/12849

Then you can stop worrying about where AR52100.sys is located! (Hopefully).

Member Avatar for bobbyraw

delete all 3, the other 2 one is for your profile and the other is a backup

Member Avatar for Serunson

"The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. The most typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses). It can also be caused by caused by faulty or mismatched RAM, or a damaged pagefile." supplied by this great site: http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
Now that jargon points to faulty RAM as a possible issue along with the possibility of bad drivers in your system.
So update any drivers you have such as GFX drivers being the most common, also try the technique of taking out both RAM sticks, and putting them back in, one at a time to see which one is bad or that a faulty slot is too blame.

Member Avatar for bobbyraw

after deleting and updating to get a fresh copy of the file in the error message try using a diff pci slot for the card.

Member Avatar for Deltamusic

I had the same problem when when turning on/off wireless on my notebook. Last week I found an update fix on the Microsoft update site under hardware. The problem went away. I always use the custom scan to find hardware updates.

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