IRQ error on my sibs' Inspiron

Hey guys. My siblings’ Inspiron 530 took a shit yesterday. It keeps blue-screening. Yesterday, it didn’t blue screen until 30 seconds or so after it got into Windows, but now it doesn’t even make it to a logon screen. I get a non-specific IRQ error, the usual not_less_or_equal or such whatever message.

I unplugged the DVD drive; I swapped the sound card; I REMOVED the sound card; I removed the modem; I tried each of the two sticks of RAM one stick at a time. No go on anything. I cleaned out the case with compressed air, to no effect.

So, it must be that the video card or hard drive went bad, right? Those are the only components left. Could it be something else I can fix without buying replacements? Thanks.

Could be drivers. how’s it react to booting into safe mode?

Might also be overheating, fans/heatsinks not clogged?

Turn off as many integrated devices in the BIOS as you can, if you’re lucky(?) that will ‘fix’ it without you needing to root around inside the case much more.

I had something like that. My laptop would BSOD first while running, and directly after that on booting up. But only in my living room; not in my bedroom.

It was related to the wireless driver. If I turned off wireless before entering my living room, it wouldn’t BSOD.

I just nuked and reinstalled Windows, and it vanished. Maybe a simple driver repair could be helpful for your sib.

Thanks for the help, everyone. Turns out it was actually some software causing the problem.

Disabling the onboard NIC didn’t work. Safe mode did. After I disabled every startup program and every non-Microsoft “Service,” I was able to get back up and running and reinstalled the X-Fi card and put in a new NIC anyway. Glad it wasn’t the X-Fi. Wonder what exactly caused the problem. I’m taking this opportunity to remove iTunes. heh.

IIRC, there was actually some issue like this that was causing iTunes to crash the OS when people plugged their iPods/iPhones in due to a bug in the usb driver it ships with… that was like maybe 2 major versions ago though so seems unlikely to be what you were seeing unless the iTunes install on the system was old and not updated at all.

Yeah, it was old, but I’d made sure I was leaving the iPod, and everything else, disconnected.

Heh, it’s funny seeing how The Other Side (not in the usual sense) lives… I had to update my little bros’ Winamp, VLC, Windows, etc…