Blue Screen of Death only when starting PR

[Afroman1225]

Up until somewhat recently, I have been playing PR without a hitch. Now, whenever I try to launch the game, my screen alternates black and gray a few times for a few seconds and then I get the BSOD with the error "driver_irql_not_less_or_equal". I only get this error when playing PR; I play several other PC games and none of them have any problems. I tested out vBF2 and even that didn't cause the issue.

So far I have tried reinstalling PR to no avail, and I also tried reinstalling and updating my graphics drivers which seemed to make the problem worse. When I updated them and restarted my computer, I found that I would get the BSOD with the same error without being able to even get to the vista login screen. I was forced to go into safe mode and do a system restore to resolve this. Prior to updating the drivers, I was able to restart just fine and the only time I got BSOD was upon starting PR.

I searched around on the "driver_irql_not_less_or_equal" error and some are saying that a BIOS flash might solve my problem, but before I went to that trouble I thought that I would make a quick post here and see if any of you had any suggestions.

System:
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9300 @2.50GHz
6gb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce9800 GT

Ask for any other system info you might find useful, and thanks for any help!

[SnipingCoward]

Before flasing the BIOS your should simply try to "reset to factory defaults".

From my exprience this error is either indicating hardware failure or grave system file corruption.
Last time I had it my RAM-Bus was broken. (use tools like "Windows Memory Diagnostic" or memtest86 from linux live-cd to check it)

If reinstalling Windows is an option you might want to try that.

[Afroman1225]

Thanks for the response. Will that just reset my BIOS are my entire computer?

[SnipingCoward]

Modifications within the BIOS will not wipe your hard drive. However it may change which hardware is recognized by the system which in turn can cause Windows to stop booting or maybe even not recognize the hdd.

Resetting to factory defaults usually fixes any corruption and merely sets the BIOS to the most compatible setup. It will directly effect the BIOS and may or may not indirectly effect your OS.


You should always have backups of your valuable data.

[Garack]

you own a soundcard?

[Afroman1225]

I think I do, yes. Could that have something to do with the issue?