Blue Screen of Death: driver_irql_not_less_or_equal

[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.

[Mapley]

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

[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

[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

[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).

[bobbyraw]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.