Analyze a BSOD (irql_less_than_or_equal)
- by Bruno Reis
Hello.
About 2 months ago I bought a new system and built it at home:
Mother board: XFX X58i
Processor: Core i7 920, using the stock cooler
Memory: 3x2GB Corsair DDR3 1600
Video card: NVIDIA GTS 250 (1GB)
Hard disk: 2x WD 500GB, 7200rpm
I have 2 screens plugged into the video card, and the system is connected to a 550W PSU. Nothing is overclocked.
After building the system, I stressed it a lot with Prime95 and rthdribl to check its stability. All my tests were perfect. So I reinstalled Win 7 x64 Professional and started using it normally.
The first week (2010-03-15) I got the infamous irql_less_than_or_equal BSOD. Ten days after (2010-03-24) I got another one. Then on 2010-04-09, 2010-05-04.
Since 2 days ago it became worse: I got one bluescreen per day! (2010-05-12, 2010-05-13, 2010-05-14).
I installed BlueScreenView to try to obtain some information, but I'm not able to extract any useful information apart from the bug check string (irql_less_than_or_equal), and that it was caused by ntoskrnl.exe (the first three at ntoskrnl.exe+71f00, the last 4 at ntoskrnl.exe+70600 -- which I suspect could be the same thing, as Microsoft could have patched this file in the mean time, so the address of the function causing it changed).
Then I stressed my memory sticks with memtest, they worked perfectly. After booting, I've stressed my GPU with FurMark and RTHDRIBL, everything was fine. Then I stressed the CPU with 4 instances of Prime95 while monitoring the temperature -- that never exceeded 85oC with the case closed --, everything fine. Finally I've stressed the whole system with HeavyLoad for a looooong time, everything worked just fine.
So, I have stressed most of the components of the system, but couldn't get any useful information from it.
Do you have any hint on what else can I do to find the culprit?
Thanks
Bruno