Problems setting up my desktop - IRQL not less or equal??

eatingrich · Jul 16, 2005, 03:41 AM

hey!

i'm setting up a new desktop, and i've put in a new harddrive but i'm having real trouble setting up XP on it all

basically once i got the harddrive in and started to set up windows i'd get an error page saying that theres been a problem blah blah blah, if its the first time its happened try again and if this has happened before then follow these instructions.

and it recommended making sure new hardware or software was installed properly (which would be the HDD) and i could try turning off caching and shadowing in the BIOS.

so as to the best of my knowledge the HDD was ok, i turned off the caching etc and it actually worked, but took HOURS to install XP, i mean like over 6 hours or something.

this happened before but only when i was trying to install it on a really old 550mhz system, now my system is 1.54ghz with 512MB RAM so i didn't think it would take too long.

so windows installed but it runs REALLY slowly, basically too slow to do anything with it. so i turned caching etc back ON and it worked fine, but became unstable and i got the error message again after a while so now i'm abit stuck!

another problem is that when XP was finishing installing it came to a screen where it said somethign like 'right, now we're going to ask a few questions to set up windows' or something, but it seemed to freeze on this screen but when i rebooted it just went straight into windows so i don't know if something hasn't been finished!

I'm searching online for some drivers/updates for my harddrive, which is an IBM deskstar but the IBM site seems quite hard to get around, i'm just trying to log onto driver guide now. i think the HDD is installed properly but i do get a message when booting up 'Primary IDE Channel no 80 conductor cable installed' and I don't have a clue what that is!

Any ideas as to how to solve any of this??

here are the specs

1.54Ghz CPU
512MB RAM
76GB HDD
128MB GeForce FX5200 Graphics Card
SB PCI64 Soundcard
Soltek motherboard.

Cheers!

Necrosis · Jul 16, 2005, 04:00 AM

I would verify your IRQ's first, and we'll go from there.

Tipstaff · Jul 16, 2005, 05:18 AM

When you tried to install XP everything was fine right up until it tried reading the hard drive size, and partition information, right? Then it came with the huge BSOD, and the error IRQL handling message?

Sometimes if there is a corrupt partition, or if the drive was formated or partitioned previously using a wierd format/partition tool it can cause the Windows installer to crash. The reason is that during the install, right when Windows accesses the hard drive, Windows loaded a compatible driver to support the IDE channel/drive. Problem was that since the drive was technically "corrupted" the driver instead caused the system to crash. I had this exact same issue today with a clients machine which had 3 FAT32 partitions of oddball sizes, and they were partitioned using Partition Magic a long time ago. This wasn't the problem exactly, but rather the drive crashed yesterday, and the partition information (Master Boot Record) somehow got corrupted. When I tried to install XP on it the system crashed at that exact spot every time until I deleted, and recreated the partition manually using a sperate partitioning tool.

Here's how to fix this: use FDISK from a Windows boot disk, or some kind of partition tool to delete the existing partition (I used SmarFDISK to do this). If you use a Windows 98 boot disk just delete the "Non-Dos" partition. Save your changes, and reboot. If you want you can create a new partition, but don't format it (waste of time). This should correct the problem, and Windows should continuing installing as normal when it hits that point again. Right after it scans the drive, and load the driver is when you get to pick the partition you want to install on. At this point just delete the partition you just created, and go about the install as you normally would.

eatingrich · Jul 16, 2005, 05:51 AM

right, now sure how to verify my IRQs - sorry!

yeah basically it got to a certain point and crashed but not sure what that point would be.

once it 'worked' i had to create a partition (it was a new HDD) and stuff and windows formatted it for me etc but it took ages.

so basically i need to boot up into dos using a boot disk of some sort. run FDisk, delete partitions etc, make a new one but don't bother formatting it. then install windows (with caching etc on) and it should run fine. then when it asks about partitions, DELETE the one i just made using FDisk and just make it install on C:\ and it should be fine?

sorry for being abit confused...hopefully this should work!

thanks for the speedy reply too, you're a lifesave!

Tipstaff · Jul 17, 2005, 12:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eatingrich

so basically i need to boot up into dos using a boot disk of some sort. run FDisk, delete partitions etc, make a new one but don't bother formatting it. then install windows (with caching etc on) and it should run fine. then when it asks about partitions, DELETE the one i just made using FDisk and just make it install on C:\ and it should be fine?

sorry for being abit confused...hopefully this should work!

thanks for the speedy reply too, you're a lifesave!

Yep, that's about right. Just so you know even though your drive is new there might have been a test partition on it that never got deleted, or God knows what. The machine I mentioned that had this same problem is running fine now. No problems. I just gave it back to my customer today after having dumped all his old data back onto the drive.

If you want the same utility that I used, or one similar check your PMs as I've sent you a link to the file. Sorry, can post it here. Just burn the ISO to a CD, and boot using it. On the disc you will see a section for partition tools, and SmarFDISK will be in that list.

eatingrich · Jul 17, 2005, 07:05 AM

cheers man! ok, i'll give an update though i have a sheet with some of the crazy stuff thats been happening on it so i'll try add more later.

basically...*big breath*...i couldn't manage to find a boot disk to enable me to use fdisk, i found a win95 one but it didn't recognise the c:\ at all. in the end i used an OLD dos 6.22 disk managed to delete the partition and stuff using that.

however, it didn't seem to do much with regards to installing windows. i checked and the part it crashed on was actually when it had finished loading up all the drivers bizarrely, it went right past the partition stuff fine, i think at the end it says something like 'installing windows...' but instead of going onto the install page it crashed.

so now i was completely stumped and as a last resort i decided to go through the caching and shadow options on my BIOS one by one, disabling them one at a time to see if there was a way i could get XP to install/run fast while not crashing.

i actually found it, i had to disable external caching and it installed fine.

so great, now i think its all working good and i set about installing drivers and stuff for my graphics card. there was one point while installing XP that a crash screen came up saying 'bad_pool_caller' but i rebooted and it carried on fine so i presumed it was a one-off.

i install the card - NVidia GeForce 5200 128MB AGP 4X, with the latest driver downloaded from nvidia - 77.72 i think? it seems ok, i try installing my sound card (my bro-in law wondered if the irql not less than or equal was caused by a conflicting soundcard being placed too close to my graphics card on the motherboard, but it still didn't work!) and it suddenly goes abit doolally - it worked fine when i put it in and the sound came on (obviously i put it in when the pc was off!) but when i installed the drivers, it worked fine until i rebooted then it wouldn't work at all. i just couldn't get into windows.

so i logged in in safe mode, uninstalled the drivers, took out the soundcard and left it out. i logged back into windows and installed dosbox and d-fend, and the old elder scrolls of arena: arena game, so i could test them out and see it was all working ok. however, when i turned it on and went into full screen it crashed but the error screen flicked so fast i couldn't figure out what it said. so i tried a different game - grand theft auto 2, this time it loaded up but parts of the graphics had funny lines going through them and when i went into the game proper the whole screen was like that and it crashed almost instantly.

so i remembered my brother in law couldn't get the graphics card to work properly so i took it out and put a GeForce MX440 64MB in there to see how that worked (uninstalling the drivers first for the other card). i reinstalled the drivers and rebooted etc.

this time arena still didn't work, but i got an error message, which i "think" might have been bad pool caller or something else i hadn't seen before. GTA2 didn't have the funny lines anymore but still crashed almost instantly after starting the game proper.

so now i don't know what to do!!!! i'd think it was "just" my graphics cards but obviously i've had trouble with it from day one. i deleted the partition and put a new one in (windows does it for you etc) and to even get that far i have to disable external caching for some reason i can't figure out. now i'm stuck as i don't know where to go with it. i don't know if its a hard drive problem or a graphics card problem or what.

i don't even have any other card installed except for the graphics card, two of which now haven't worked and stalled on the same point albeit with slightly different results.

do you think it could be nvidia cards, should i try others? anything jumping out at anyone. sorry its really long winded, i tried loads of different stuff last night! i'll try give this SmartFDisk thing a try too if you think it'll help! thankfully when XP installs properly it doesn't take too long so i don't mind wiping the hard drive clean again!

eatingrich · Jul 17, 2005, 07:07 AM

whoops. so here are the stats then

Soltek motherboard,
AMD 1.54ghz CPU
512MB RAM
IBM Deskstar 76GB HDD
NVidia GeForce 5200 128MB AGP/GeForce 2 MX440 64MB AGP

now, the motherboard, CPU and ram all worked in a system fine before i bought it off my bro-in-law, which makes me think maybe its the HDD and graphics card.