Question For The Computer Savvy
 

This morning my desktop (Windows Vista) told me that it shut down in order to keep from hurting itself. It said "Driver_IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equal" and showed a couple of number/letter strings that I suppose means something to someone. I restarted in safe mode/command prompt and restored the system to a couple of days ago and it seems to be working again, although it's acting pretty strange. Windows Mail is very slow to respond and I'm getting that (Not Responding) message up on the top. Browsers (Firefox, IE...doesn't matter) have similar problems. Hold the cursor on a link and it takes a few moments for the link to become "live"...same thing with changing tabs.

Is this thing getting ready to explode, or what?

Not really sure if it will explode, but Vista wasn't a very stable platform from the get go. My recommendation would be to back up all you data on a regular basis to an external hard drive and keep an eye on it. If/when it does take a total dump, at least you would have all your data and pictures. Then you could restore it to either an updated machine or a new one altogether. Since it is Vista you are running on, that tells me that you have an older system that prolly should be replaced anyway. You're prolly running on borrowed time as it is.

One TB external HD's can be had for less than a $100 bill these days. I remember the days when a 10 meg platter for storage cost nearly $500, PC's ran best with 64K of RAM, and we were lucky to have a 5.25 floppy that was high density.

Thanks for the response, parker. I'm using an online backup service, so data loss isn't really a concern. The machine is only 3 or 4 years old, I'd hope they have a longer service life than that.

I've seen that message only a few times. I think it was due to an unstable hard drive starting to get flaky.

I would suggest running "CHKDSK C: /F" from the command line. It will ask to run the next time you reboot. So reboot, and let it run. See if it finds bad sectors. Do that routine a few times until it comes back clean. If it can.

Windows is trying to avoid losing data when you get that message.

Steve You can get an upgrade kit from Microcenter in Tustin, pretty cheap and upgrade to windows 7... I would do a reformat, and then load the Windows 7 upgrade... Fairly easy to do! if you get stuck, give me a call my son is a computer tech...

Yes, this is generally due to HW going bad, and based on the other symptoms you described is does sound like it is the HDD (hard drive).

You probably have a .DMP file that was written out when the error message was experienced. You can search for that .DMP file on your HDD and upload it to one of a myriad of sites where uber computer geeks can help you diagnose.

ahh the Blue Screen of Death. could be a lot of things. its a loong process of elimination. i build custom gaming desktops on the side. so i know the how frustrating it is when things go awry.

my advice as another member said is to start backing up your important data. then i would do a clean format/install of the operating system.

since im very local to you. if you need help on it. shoot me a PM. i can do that for you. ill even upgrade you to a win7 OS.

i got a lot of clients that come to me with this problem. the easiest and cost effective way of fixing it is a clean OS reinstall. 90% of the time some window files is corrupted. it happens over time. its one of those things that just malfunctions.

Sorry for dropping the ball on this :o

It's actually been working fine for the most part, other than I can't access FTE anymore on it. No problems getting on any other sites, just FTE...I get the "connection was reset" message whenever I try.

Thanks for the offer Dennis...I may take you up on that :-X22

Reloading the OS is a lot of work, but so rewarding. Once done it is like Christmas morning.

My advice is to not put all your trust in Carbonite. Backup independently, and consider Carbonite as your emergency backup.

In this case, your best bet will be to purhase a new HD. Then install your OS on the new drive, and restore directly from your old drive. Especially since we have some question about the reliability of your old drive. Drives are dirt cheap. There has been a shortage lately, but it hasn't affected prices that I have seen.

No Problemo!

Yea those online backups is not really secure per say. i mean do you really back up your "private home movie p*rn" :-X04files somewhere else. haha

HDD are cheap now. you can buy one of those SSD drives for 120 bucks use that for the OS only and just everyday files. then get a dedicated slave drive for backup and important files.

I don't have any problem with the security. And they are welcome to my porn if they want it. Most of it is K-9 related. :-hair

But it is not a very fast or convenient way to selectively restore data. Compared to a second hard drive where you can simply drag and drop your files onto the new drive.

by porn..i mean the ones that is video taped in ones Private bedroom lol....

:-X04

TMI, Denny. T...M...I!!!

Well, it looks like I procrastinated a little too long...it won't even boot now.

Them's the breaks