IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL TO (SOLVED!)
Lorne Torres
IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors, and video card freeze-ups. A little bit of
history (somewhat lengthy, so scroll down below to THE FIX for things to try
on your machine if you are having this problem) on the issues I was having,
but first the hardware. All are PCI cards except for the graphics card.
Disclaimer: Even though most of what is said here is harmless to your
system, you attempt any of this at your own risk. I will not be held
responsible for anything, period. I tried to make this as generic as
possible, but some things are specific.
Hardware & OS
Windows XP PRO (all updates from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) except
for Geforce 3, and Intel driver)
Athlon XP 1800 (1.533ghz) (default everything 266FSB, 1.800V)
Asus A7V266 Motherboard VIA VT8366 Chipset (1002c, and 1003 BIOS used)
Minitower Case with 300W PSU
512MB PC 2100 DDR (1 chip)
Visiontek Geforce 3 (23.11 drivers)
20GB Maxtor 7200 (ATA100) (Primary Master)
40GB Quantum 7200 (ATA100) (Primary Slave)
Soundblaster Audigy (latest XP drivers)
Intel 10/100 NIC
Kingston (Intel) 10/100 NIC
Plextor 16/10/40 (Secondary Master)
BTC 12X DVD (Secondary Slave)
Ambient HAM Modem 56k (Phoebe)
Terayon Docsis Cable modem (which isn't relevant to this situation)
I had been running this machine for about 3 months. Everything was working
just fine, and then all of a sudden I received the first nv4.sys error
(infinite loop). It only happened once and all was fine. A few days later
I read about the infinite loop and supposedly the 23.11 drivers so I decided
to install the 4in1 motherobard drivers (4.37 final). Everything went fine
for a week or so after that. Then I installed a video card tweak program
(Powerstrip 3.12 shareware). As soon as I installed that everything started
going downhill from then on. Although, I'm not 100% sure it was 'only'
Powerstrip that caused this, but I'm sure it had a hand in it. I started
getting the IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL errors upon almost every boot up, as well
as the sysdata.xml errors. I corrected the sysdata.xml error by going into
c:\windows\minidump folder and deleting the files in there as well as my
temp folders in c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\temp and
c:\windows\temp.
I then uninstalled Powerstrip, but still kept blue screening. I was
frustrated, so I attempted the system restore, because I didn't feel like
going through registry entries and yadda yadda, but the machine blue
screened in the middle of that and from that point on the machine wouldn't
even boot. Immediately after posting, blue screen. It was trashed. Just
to be sure it wasn't a virus, I took both hard drives attached them to
another computer as secondary drives and ran Norton 2002 with the latest
definitions on it, both were uninfected.
After that, I was ready to just start from scratch and install WinXP on a
fresh hard drive. So I fdisked the 20GB Maxtor, formatted and reinstalled
WinXP. 5 minutes after my first boot into WinXP I had the
IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen. I was ready to destroy this computer
(but I couldn't because it's just so fast.) ;) In any case, I thought to
myself "this is a fresh install of WinXP with nothing on it, and it's doing
this. it has to be hardware related" The strange thing was, everything was
working fine prior to the software install. Hrmmmm.. I figured I'd start
with something basic so I upgraded my BIOS from 1002C to 1003. Still BSOD.
I then thought, well it could be a power issue so let me remove the hard
drive and the modem just incase my 300W power supply isn't giving everything
enough juice. Another BSOD. I was sick of this at this point, so the next
day I spent literally ALL day researching newsgroups and forums for ideas on
what could be causing this. After reading through hundreds of posts, I
came up with a list of things to try and some ideas of my own popped up
while reading everything.
THE FIX
I am unsure if the below things will work for you, but give them a try. I
also want to emphasize my determination to get the most performance out of
my machine as possible. I was cringing when I heard people suggest
performance-decreasing steps as a first thing to try. Such as.. (i.e. Turn
off fast writes, turn your RAM speeds down. etc.) I think those should be
LAST resorts because it defeats the purpose of having a fast machine.
Everything else should be attempted first.
1) Move your PCI cards into different slots, what worked for me was putting
my Network cards on PCI slots 1&5, and my Soundblaster Audigy in slot 4.
This has to do with IRQ allocation for the devices. Before I had everything
on IRQ 11, and now things are distributed evenly. (I know ACPI allows for
IRQ sharing and it is normal, but I still like my devices on separate IRQ'
s.. it just feels safer. No one is going to tell me 5 devices sharing 1 IRQ
is the same as 1 device on one IRQ). :)
2) Load Setup Defaults in BIOS (I cannot stress this enough, even if you
have the defaults already), and possibly even going as far as clearing the
CMOS by removing the CMOS battery or resetting it via jumpers.
3) Set 'Plug and Play OS' in the BIOS from YES to NO (if running Win2k/XP)
Microsoft recommends this for those operating systems. You can even
experiment with this if you're running Win9x.
4) Set AGP drive strength from Auto to AE [(P = A) and (N = E)] or (N =F)
5) Reinstall WinXP after all of the above has been done
I was able to get this machine to work even by enabling Fast Writes in the
BIOS, using AGP 4X, and increasing aperture size to 128MB. (Which some say
can be unstable). I ran the 3Dmark 2001 benchmark 5 times in a row to
confirm stability. (Previously, I would freeze up 1 minute or less into
it). There is some more testing I need to do, but not one freeze up since!
The above worked for me, now if you are still having problems after that I
would suggest then trying some additional steps below. I have learned that
no problem resolution steps are too small; the smallest changes can make a
difference.
- Upgrade your BIOS (sometimes beta BIOS's are out that can fix your
problem)
- Install ALL of the latest drivers for your hardware
- Go to windowsupdate and install updates
- Swap Secondary Master and Secondary slave (if applies to you)
- Switch memory slots (if you have memory in one slot, move it to another)
some systems cannot do this depending on the type of RAM and if in pairs or
not.
- Check to see if your CPU is overheating. Mine runs about 48-49 degrees
Celsius, which is fine for my CPU type.
- Swap USB device to another USB slot
- Get new IDE cables. This one is often overlooked. They 'can' go bad.
- Uninstall and disconnect any unused hardware
- Go from jumperless mode on your motherboard and manually set everything.
(It's less flexible if you plan on overclocking, but for many people seems
more reliable and has eliminated blue screens.)
- Some people have reported issues with USB hubs, especially the unpowered
ones. Remove it, and see if you are still having problems.
- Disable onboard USB if not used
- Install VIA 4in1 drivers (if you have the appropriate motherboard)
- Install latest AC97 sound drivers (if you have the built in sound)
- If you are attempting to troubleshoot this problem and are overclocking
your machine.. DON'T. Your problems may be resulting specifically from
overclocking. Put that machine at it's designed specs.
- Attempt to modify IRQ's designations in BIOS for each slot. Sometimes
changing one IRQ can make all the difference in the world.
- I grabbed this from some forum on Geforce 3 crashing:
An idea against crashing Geforce cards has helped quite a few people:
Use DirectX Diagnostics (dxdiag in run) go to the
Display tab and make sure that the VDD File it is using is NV4_mini.sys and
not NV4.sys (or some other file)
To correct it goto this Key in the registry
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nv]
And change the Imagepath key to read System32\DRIVERS\nv4_mini.sys
And also this key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nv4]
And do the same as above change the Imagepath key to read
System32\DRIVERS\nv4_mini.sys
Close regedit and reboot.
If you've tried everything above, then below are some performance DECREASING
steps that you can try that may help, but as I said before I recommend this
being a last step other than faulty hardware. Try one at a time; you don't
want to set anything lower than it has to be.
- Set DDR RAM frequency ratio in BIOS from 133:133 to 133:100
- Set AGP 4x to 2x in BIOS
- Set AGP to normal instead of optimal in BIOS
- Lower RAM speed in BIOS. Change from 3-2-2 to 3-3-3
- Disable AGP Fast Write
- Disable Byte Merge
-- Every BIOS is different, experiment with timing and performance options
..and finally confirm that you do not have defective hardware. In many
cases you can confirm this prior to trying any steps, but not all.
Hope this helps. I decided to write this up to save someone else from
wasting quite a bit of valuable time.