Dell goes down the tubes?

I will do just that Rills. Thank you again!

I have reinstalled Vista. "Driver IRQL not less or equal" error went away but now I am getting 0x00000124 blue sceen crashes which (according to Windows Debugger) are caused by hardware. Hope that new motherboard will resolve this particular problem...

zahratustra said:

I have reinstalled Vista. "Driver IRQL not less or equal" error went away but now I am getting 0x00000124 blue sceen crashes which (according to Windows Debugger) are caused by hardware. Hope that new motherboard will resolve this particular problem...

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I have had that error on an old Pentium 3 motherboard and it is a real pain to find exactly what hardware it is. I literally took out every piece of hardware I had and I tested my power supply with a multimeter.

What is your current motherboard?

nVidia nForce 650i SLI. BTW could you tell me how can I make my Windows Debugger display correct symbols? I know where to enter the path but what the path should be?

EDIT - too early to tell for sure but I MIGHT have found the cause of 0x00000124 error. Apparently BitDefender IS v10 (2007) can't live with Vista SP1. I have installed BD IS 2008 and (so far) no crashes. Motherboard still has to go through since it fails to recognise sound card any other hard drives than C.

Bartacus said:

Same here Dhruin. Plus I don't like ATI -> more of an nvidia fan.

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By the way, AMD bought ATI some time ago and it's now AMD graphics cards versus nVidia.

I bought only NVidia cards as well ...

Well ... that was until I discovered that some of my older games don't run with newest NVidia cards ...

My next one will most probably ATI/AMD.

MY next card will also be a Radeon. Just too many issues with nVidia cards and their drivers!

BTW my 0x00000124 crash didn't completly go away it just happens less often.

Are you running in SLi? And, yes, Nvidia and Vista have had their issues over the past year. I have used both ATI and Nvidia and I really haven't had issues with either. But then I am not one who updates the driver every time a new one comes out unless absolutely needed.

As the old adage rightly states, "If it isn't broke don't fix it."

No SLI since I use only one video card. Besides I have heard about a lot of people having issues with SLI and Vista. I agree with you about drivers though why update something which works perfectly?

zahratustra said:

First it kept having blue screen "machine_check.exception" crashes which Dell tech support eventually decided was due to faulty graphic card. !

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You don't enjoy the blue screen of death game?

Ha! I upgraded my Dell yesterday... well it was a fun ride. I wanted to install a new gfx adapter which makes use of PCIe 2.0, but unfortunately the power supply in my dell had only onne 6 Pin connector - not really Dell's fault, the computer is about 2 years old, and at that point in time one 6 Pin connector was enough. Anyway, the big problem really was to get out the power supply. As much as I love it that Dell delivers their desktops with everything inside being tied together and stuff, it's a nightmare if you have to exchange parts. I'm not kidding you there - I had to cut some wires from my old power supply to get it out. The good thing was that even the old mainboard was able to recognize the new gfx adapter which really speaks for Dell... very often you have patch old mainboards if you want to use a PCIe 2.0 card in a PCIe slot.
So far I really cannot complain much about Dell. When I got this computer I had some trouble getting XP installed (Vista was pre-installed) and the support was quite helpfull.

Benedict said:

You don't enjoy the blue screen of death game?

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LOL Benedict. I do! But, on occasions, I also like to use my computer to do something else too

EDIT: I had my motherboard replaced yest. and no more 0x00000124 error so far. Funny thing though.... Just before Dell's technician arrived I have found online advice that one solution to this error is to reset your CMOS. Since changing motherboard did just that for my machine I am wondering now if it was new motherboard or resetting CMOS that did the trick.....

Still, the bottom line is that my computer now purrs along like a contented cat