I've been having a problem with my computer since I arrived at college. Whenever I run a process more intensive than internet explorer my computer screen either turns black and is unresponsive, or gives me a blue screen beginning with something like DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_EQUAL. The blue screen has a different error code each time, but always mentions that a driver or newly installed hardware may be the cause, and it ends by saying it has performed a complete memory dump. I've tried uninstalling the drivers to the only new hardware I've installed (for a PCTV card) but the problem persists. I'm using Windows XP Pro, an athlon XP at 1.68 GHZ, 512 MB DDR Ram, and an asus MoBo. I've scanned for viruses and there are none, and Spybot and Adaware are not detecting any spyware. I gave up and tried to reinstall windows from scratch, but it always gives me the same blue screen once the installation has begun. Is there any way to bypass the blue screen, clear my hard drive, and reinstall windows? Any thoughts or comments are extremely appreciated as this has been very frustrating and I'd like to avoid paying 150 bucks to get it fixed if possible.

It sounds to me like the BIOS settings got tampered with. An error message indicating a IRQ settings conflict means that the input/output language of a driver is conflicting with itself. This often cannot be detected via device manager. I suggest you go into the BIOS and reset it to the factory default settings. Save the settings to CMOS and restart the computer. If this does not work and you really want to reinstall XP...let me know. Best of luck! Joel

Hey Joel, thanks for the response. You'll have to excuse me, I don't know how to flash my BIOS. I have an ASUS A7V266-E MoBo, I went to their site and read the instructions. I'm supposed to use an AFLASH program during boot up, so I put the program and the new BIOS on a floppy disk. Apparently it needs to be a bootable floppy disk, how do I make it a bootable floppy disk so that I can use the AFLASH program? Also, how do I save the settings to CMOS? Thanks in advance.

P.S., I read the How to to make a boot disk, but I can't find a create boot disk tab in the add/remove programs section.