Greetings,

I have problems with my Acer, shown in my signature. When i try to install any operating system, Windows or Linux, i get an error message, saying "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL". Is this a motherboard or hard drive problem, or is it an easy fix?

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Intel Celeron 370 1.5 Ghz, 448MB DDR2 RAM, ATI Radeon Xpress 200M, 60GB HD
AMD Athlon 3500 2.4Ghz, 2.5GB DDR RAM, Asus Geforce 7300GS PCI-E, 250GB SATA HD

Hi talldude123,
Firstly, I'd like to welcome to CompuForums - it's good to have you here. I hope you will be on the board for a long time, and if there is anything I can do to make your experience better please let me know. We are here to help you, so it would be appreciated if you could help us by posting in threads as well as your own. By doing so, you are helping to keep this site running in the future, and we will respond to your thread faster too. If you can't help us, then we can't help you.

Are you sure that you are seeing this error under Linux? It is a Windows error, which almost always indicates a hardware problem - sometimes it's the system overheating, but usually it's bad RAM. Google for memtest86 - download and run it, and let us know it's results.

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Thanks,
Ash
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Not heard of this in Linux but on XP its usually on the IDE either cables not seated right or device jumpers set wrong ie slave instead of master or other way round.Sorry didn't look at the signature properly presume its for the laptop. Has the drive been formated fully?

I would say it's something interally like the Hard Drive or Motherboard settings are not right, like the other person suggested about the jumpers.

I'm with Ash on this one..

Definitely sounds like a RAM issue. If you have 2 sticks take one out see what happens if nothing then put 1 back in and take the other out and see what happens. usually one stick is bad. If nothing fixes it reseat PCI's, IDE's, AGP's.

The first thing I would do is to run the computer till it gives you that error, then quickly restart, go into the BIOS and check the CPU temperature. And if overheating isn't the case then it's most likely a RAM problem as Ash said.
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This user added the following:
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this link tells you pretty much all you need to know about this. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - TweaksForGeeks

Hey what's up?
I have to highly agree with Ash on this topic. Once again he's perfectly on target. Definately a RAM or CPU overheating problem. I had this same issue once before when a stick of RAM went bad on my Desktop PC. What a pain in the ass it was to find what exactly the problem was because so many online resources were so misleading. So many people were rambling on another form I am memeber of about how a Program Blackice had something to do with it. Very untrue because when they uninstalled it they still had the problem. And the only time they exprienced the error IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL was when they would copy large files from one directory to another or when they were running multiple programs at once. They said I was wrong but guess who stopped experiencing the problem My advice would be to do as Ash said earlier run a memtest86 or simply replace the RAM. Definately bad RAM...

I also agree. I would try to replace the ram and see if that fixes it and please let us know.

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Ubuntu 8.04.1

Gnome 2.22.3