XP Pro IRQ Problem

This one has me stumped.

Aprox. one month ago I purchased a new AMD XP 1700+, along with a Thermaltake Volcano 7+ cooling fan.

Apon installing it, I also reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled XP Pro. No sooner did I have the instalation completed (Clean Install) that I began to get a BSOD apon startup:

"IRQ_NOT LESS_THAN_EQUAL"

Now, I have been puoring over my BIOS settings trying to get an Idea of what may be causing this, and I found something interesting. If I change anything, and I do mean ANY setting in the BIOS, even if its just floppy seak, or number lock, it will boot. However, the next time I Hard Boot the box, I get the BSOD again. This does not happen on restarts, just Hard Boots.
But unless I go into the BIOS and make a change, I cannot boot, I have to enter the BIOS and change something, anything, even if I promply restart the box after XP loads and undo the change I made in the BIOS. But a change must be made for XP to boot.

Here is my IRQ infor from MSinfo32:
[IRQs]

Resource Device Status
IRQ 5 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 5 NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 OK
IRQ 5 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 D-Link DFE-530TX+ PCI Adapter OK
IRQ 5 Hercules Game Theater(tm) XP 6.1 OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard OK


Yeah I know, lot going on on IRQ 5. But, never had an issue before now with these devises in these slots.

Here is my system:
Abit KT7A-Raid (latest BIOS Revision)
AMD XP 1700+
Hercules Game Theater 6.1
GeForce 4 mx 440 AGP
640mb PC 133 SDRAM
Win XP Pro OEM

To try and get rid of this issue, I went on a virtual driver witch hunt. I made sure I had everything updated; Sound, Vidio, NIC, USB, BIOS, IDE, DMA, XP Updates, VIA 4in1's, AMD AGP's, Motherboard Drivers.... The list goes on.

I also read through another forum about someone having another issue when upgrading his AMD chip that resulted from not a big enough Power Supply in the box. And being that Mine was a 350w, and thats just above AMD's specs for the 1700+, I thought Id eliminate the doubt and upgrade. Intro the new Powmax 500w dual fan aluminum PS. Approved by AMD.

"IRQ_NOT LESS_THAN_EQUAL"

damnit

Needless to say, by now, when I CAN get the thing to finally boot, my benchmarks are through the roof. I can't get this thing to crash. Very stable, and the systems temp stays at about 36deg C, and the Chip is at about 39deg C under heavy load. That amazed me. Love the new fan.

But, the IRQ thing...

Just for kicks, I played musical PCI slots with my Sound Card and NIC. Same problem every time. So they are now back in thier origional possitions.

Any thoughts?

You may want to check this out,but it usually only occurs if you have Roxio CD-Direct installed.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q311466

Good Luck,

Paul

I am having the same problem as you, and here are the similarities:

We both use the via chipset with Win XP Pro and I just installed an Nvidia GeForce 4 MX440. Since then I have had that same error popping up from time to time.

I think it has to be am IRQ problem of some sort because most of my devices are lumped onto IRQ 11. This is what windows XP does and there is not a way to change it inside XP (from what I know anyway). However I think there are some BIOS settings that will Shuffle around the IRQ's, but I can't figure them out. It has something to do with ACPI. Try disabling it in your bios and then reset the ESCD. This might work. Let me know

If anybody else has any ideas, please let me know.

Thanks.

disabling acpi in bios will cause xp not to boot... if you do that, you MUST install a standard hal by pressing f5 when setup says to press f6 for a scsi driver.

irq_not_less_than I have see with bad or mismatching ram (yes even the same company ram) and with Network cards... particularly 10base cards.

So my advice would be to check the ram and pull the network card.

If you were in the UK I would have suggested your ADSL modem driver supplied by BT which also gives this annoying random error.
Other instances can be via chipsets [as mentioned] and one other cause that I have read about on the news groups but which eludes me right now but heres a few to keep you going

Is there a way then to get an IRQ shuffle in XP?? Or does everything just run on the same IRQ??

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q314068
heres a link about xp irq assignments..maybe you should try setting the bios setting for plug and play OS to "no"

I've had this and other stop errors on AMD systems only. The solution for me, every time is to go into the BIOS and tweak memory settings untill they match the processor speed and FSB as close as possible. Once

I got the settings just right, the stop errors dissapeared.