been getting a lot of stop errors lately. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL does anyone know of a way to fix this? I've looked around online and one site said it was most likely the PCU over heating or the memory is failing. Anyone know what should be the best course of action? I called my dad, he works for HP, but hes in California til friday night so he cant take a look at it for a few more days.

The computer is a year and 1/2 old. Running XP home with 512mb of memory, 2.8 ghtz processor. Nice computer, but I'm finding out Dells are from Hell.

I doubt your CPU is bad. Sounds like either a bad card or motherboard, or more likely just a driver issue.
What version of windows? What kind of computer?

I must have edited my first post as you responded to it. The main system info is in my first post.

Depending on how computer smart you are, you can try a few things.
Easiest thing would be to run a full recovery. This would put the computer back to day one and delete all your stuff, so back it up first. It would eliminate the chance of it being a software issue.
More advanced thing at this point woudl be to uninstall and reinstall drivers for everything you have drivers for. Most Dell's have a "driver" CD to let you do this. Or, get them from their website.

You could pull PCI cards out one by one seeing if the problem goes away. Could always be a hardware issue with those.

lol if your looking up pornography and i mean and yes havent we all at one point or another. The best thing to do is totally delete windows. Reinstall it with the disks that Dell gives you. Yes the 6 or 7 discs that came with it. Pick the one named windows. It is purple. Put reinstall advanced. Enter your card key which is the little #s on the side of your computer. Sometimes called the windows key. Then your going to have to do a another long line of junk. ive maxed out my key so i have to reinstall windows every 31 days or pay 100 bucks lol screw that. You better back your files up though because everything but your memory in your H drive is deleted and this is readily accesable. That is even out of my league.

no I'm not looking up porn, sry to disappoint...

Well thats one of the biggies of screwing up a computer, either that our your just getting radnom error messages. If your truly are out of memory that quick you obviously used it on somthing. Computers just dont screw up ya know. lol Do you download a lot of music, games, etc. If so youve probably ran into a virus, trojan, etc. I dont look at porn either I just know that its one of the easiest ways to infect your computer.I got my computer screwed up because of song downloading. What type of virus anti hacker software you got anyway. Another simple way to sometimes fix a problem would be to system restore. You select that by going into the tools section under the start menu and putting it back to an earlier date. Let me know if that works as well.

I use Nortin Anti-virus (Corporate Ed.). My dad does internet security for HP so I get freebies, but I can still get infected. Nortin doesnt find anything, and neither does yahoo anti-virus. Scan disc says its all good. I tried doing a dell driver reset but it says that there isnt any problems. Ive done system restores before and they dont fix the problem. All I know is I'm pretty well screwed, depending on if I can get this sorted out I may be in the market for a new pc.

As to what i do on my computer. I watch Top Gear (british car show) on youtube a lot and I'd imagine that taking up some memory. I also like playing flight simulators and those are very large programs, and you can never have too much memory.

yeah sounds like you have more of a driver computer problem then anything infecting your computer. Sounds like its in the mother board or other things that are out my league. I know virus files, how to find viruses, virus types, and how and where they implant themselves. I dont even use a virus program I know where to find them if I get them and I recognize them lol. But well sorry I couldnt help. hope ya get it fixed though.

Hey Brown, try this. Restart your computer, and press F8 at the character-mode screen that displays the prompt For troubleshooting and advanced startup options press F8. On the resulting Advanced Options menu, choose the Last Known Good Configuration option. I've had to do this a few times on my machine and friends of mine machines. We play alot of games and sometimes the drivers get screwed up.

Have your dad get you an HP. That's what I'd recommend.

Yes Dell is crap... That error is from 1)a driver issue 2)hardware issue... More then likely a driver issue...

goto start>all programs>accessories>system tools>system restore and do a restore to a date that was before your having these problems, after that goto microsoft update and download all the latest drivers, that should solve your problem, if you still experience it, reinstall windows and that should correct it

More then likely its a Driver problem rather then hardware failure

I've tried doing a system restore, didnt work. I've done "restart in last known good configuration" and that doesnt do anything. And good old dell didnt give me a copy of XP with my computer, so I'm not sure how I would reinstall XP.

I've also tried running my comupter without the modem and sound card in it and I still get the error. I'm about ready to punt this machine against the wall too see if that fixes it.

My mom has a Dell.

It is the biggest piece I have ever seen. It's brand spanking new, and I hate it. I have a four year old Gateway laptop running Windows2k that I prefer WAY more. I'd rather bleed profusely from my eyes than use that Dell. My best friend grew up around computers, she built her own, her dad runs a computer business, and even she doesn't completely know why it does some of the things it does.

Dell puts so much useless crap on them before they ship them out, it's just unbelievable. Some of it is spyware, too. If you can get your dad to bring you a copy of WinXP, just wipe the HD and reinstall the non-Dell version of XP; you'll be grateful in the end.

Why is it that I can do anything on my computer (internet, word processing, minor programs) but when I want to play a game it takes a dump on me?