Computer is behaving rather unexpectedly.

[aimeeandbeatles]

This morning I installed this cheap-o horse game that someone gave me... My system requirements were well above it so I should have no issue, right? Well the graphics decided to keep glitching up and the game crashed on me. Messed around with various compatibility settings but it kept crashing. So I got fed up, closed the game, and turned on some music. All of a sudden I get a blue screen IRQL_DRIVER_NOT_EQUAL_OR_LESS.

I have a dump file but for the life of me can't remember how to open them. I tried Notepad++ and got garbage data.

But this, along with the fact that my computer is sometimes lagging up on the simplest things and all the DEP errors popping up the other day, makes me wonder if I may have a hardware fault. What should I do?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

A dump file is a binary dump of physical memory I think, so useless unless you can attach a debugger to the process.

Could be a virus, consider backing up your data and reinstalling Windows if you have a disc.

IRQL_DRIVER_NOT_EQUAL_OR_LESS is a driver problem, but could be almost anything from hardware faults to bad programming of the driver.

 

[Zelig]

Run memtest86+ overnight

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is this it?
http://www.memtest.org/

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

OK so I finally debugged it and it came up with netio.sys. Does anyone know anyhting about it? When I googled it, other people got recurring BSOD's but mine hasnt recurred yet.

EDIT: It also had this string: 0xD1 (0x14, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFFFFF827B4A9A)

ANOTHER EDIT: I can zip and upload the dump file if anyone wants to take a closer look

 

[ParadigmShifter]

You need a (kernel) debugger to investigate further. That's far more effort than it's worth.

NETIO.SYS is the network driver I assume.

0xD1 could be the opcode or an error code, not sure.

OK, I looked it up. 0xD1 is the error code for IRQL_LEVEL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. That's complicated to explain

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah. Ill run a memtest when I can but if anyone wants to look heres the dump.