Both Dell Computers crash periodically, with a stop error screen

Using XP and MS Office with Word 2003 on two fairly new Dell computers.
The same problem occurs on both computers.
Once or twice a month, the computer will crash. I get an error message which fills the entire monitor screen which says in part:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer...


Needless to say, I lose lots of work. The backup save feature seems not to be working, also. Again, the problem occurs no matter which computer I am using.

Any idea what is causing this problem?

Hello aob :)

It is suspicious that it happens on both machines so maybe it is not an XP fault. Makes me think that you have done the same thing to both of them recently like

Adding RAM.
Updating the same drivers
Updated something else

Do you also get a STOP message similar to
STOP 0x000000D1 (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xf7167161)

Have a look in these places for errors

1. Right click My Computer / Properties / Hardware / Device Manager.
Look for "Yellow" errors

2. Control Panel / Performance and Maintenance / Admin Tools / Event Viewer / System.
Look for "Red" errors. Double click on error.
If there are a lot, some of them will be duplicates so just post one of each.
Take a note of the Event ID and also the Source and post them back.

Elaine

Elaine:

Found the following red error under Event---->System. There are lots of them, apparently dating back to when my crashes occurred.

Does this look to you, as it looks to me, that one of my drivers needs to be updated?

Not sure what WinRT refers to. Will look it up. Could be related to Winfax, which is my faxing software. Yes, I do have Winfax on both machines and use it all day, every day.




The WinRT Toolkit Generic Driver service failed to start due to the following error:
Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Elaine:

WinRT is not associated with winfax. Will look into the help and support from microsoft to see if there is anything I can do. There is a link provided under the the error description.

That particular Stop error is almost certainly associated with a buggy driver. Next time you get the Blue Screen, see if there are any files listed, as that can help track down the offending driver.

From what I can see WinRT is an ancient utility dating back to NT4 and Win95 days. If you have it installed then I would uninstall it, I doubt it is fully compatible with WinXP.

SS:

If I installed it, I certainly was not aware that I was doing so. Will try to uninstall. Will also note file info if and when the crash occurs again.

It's possible my stop error may be caused by equipment, particularly a kvm switch which connects my computers. I have no idea what to do about the kvm switch. I need the switch. It does not come with software, so there is no driver which needs to be updated. Any ideas?

I really don't think that it will be that switch - Windows wouldn't even be aware of its existence, and certainly won't be affected by it.

Supersparks:

That is good news and bad news. Good, in that I will not waste my time worrying about the kvm switch. Bad news in that I still do not know what is causing my stop error.
Back to the drawing board for me. Next, I will try to make sure that I have the latests driver for everything that requires a driver.

Yes, as I said before it would help if you could post all other information on the blue screen such as a STOP message similar to
STOP 0x000000D1 (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xf7167161)

You might have to run a machine until the error occurs again

Did you uninstall WinRT ? The fact that errors for it are showing in Event Viewer since the crashes started could have some bearing on the problem

Elaine

My last two error messages said:

Technical Information:
***STOP: OX000000D1(Ox0000000C, Ox00000002,Ox00000000,OxF4D02F21

***portcls.sys - Address F4D02F21 base at F4D02000, Date Stamp 40574e49


Hopefully, this means something to you.

portcls.sys
That is the sound card driver

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/audio-...rtcls-sys.html

Elaine

Dunedin:

From what I read, given the link you provided, it sounds like others have had similar problems, corrected by addressing the sound card. Will do this immediately. It make take a little while, since my problem only occurs once every two weeks, or so, but will post back to let you know.

Thanks.

aob

Okay dokey.

Good luck :)

Elaine

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aob

Using XP and MS Office with Word 2003 on two fairly new Dell computers.
The same problem occurs on both computers.
Once or twice a month, the computer will crash. I get an error message which fills the entire monitor screen which says in part:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.


If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer...


Needless to say, I lose lots of work. The backup save feature seems not to be working, also. Again, the problem occurs no matter which computer I am using.

Any idea what is causing this problem?

---

Hi

We had this issue on Dell Laptops at our company. We were implementing SMS. We found that Norton Go Back was failing due to the SMS Client that was installed. When we removed Norton Go Back the blue screen issue stopped.

Pauly