Driver_IRQL_Not_Less_or_Equal BSOD--How do I fix it?

[Circusboy]

Hi,

I am helping a friend try to fix their computer. I am not the most computer savvy person in the world--I know just enough to be dangerous--so am trying to sort out a problem they're having on their machine.

A short history:

They have been running their XP PC (HP, not service pack two I don't believe, though I'll update that when I get the chance--see below) machine on a hi-speed connection for over a year with absolutely no virus protection. I was asked to help because the number of problems they were experiencing made the machine practically unusable (big surprise!). They had pop-ups, adware, etc. etc., and thrown in among these problems was this BSOD with the "driver_IRQL_not_less_or equal" fault.

I installed Trend Micro PC-cillin, and a spyware and ad-ware program to get the malware under control (they were infected with a number of trojans and viruses, some of which I was able to remove), but now I'm getting the BSOD so often that I can't make any headway.

My questions: Is the BSOD an issue with the harddrive, or is it a Windows issue? Is it possible that it is being caused by the trojans/viruses/etc., or do I have a bad driver? If I start it in safe mode, what do I need to do to fix this problem?

Thanks in advance for your replies. It looks like I'm probably going to be spending my weekend sorting this out so any assistance you could offer will be much appreciated.

[PrntRhd]

Welcome to the PC Guide forums!

I would suggest removing the data that you can and nuking the drive with HDD manufacturer utilities or DBAN, and restoring the installation with the recovery disks (They do have the disks, I hope).
The reason why I would go that route is there is simply no way to know if that have been infected with rootkits or anything else, and the lack of reasonable care by the user means infection by almost anything is quite possible.

The more painful alternative is to download HijackThis and posting the resulting log in Applications & Security and removing malware layers at a time. Budfred and the other readers are good but you have to understand severe infections may sometimes overwhelm the resources needed to remove the problems. One step out of order may wind up with Option 1 anyway.

[Circusboy]

Hi PrntRhd,

Thanks for the response. What you said is kinda what I was guessing too. I have them searching for their recovery disks but it isn't looking promising. One further question. You said:

-->I would suggest removing the data that you can and nuking the drive with HDD manufacturer utilities or DBAN<--

Where do I get these utilities? How do I go about actually doing the scrub? I have reformatted hard-drives before, but always using Windows.

BTW, I did the HijackThis move first, and actually their log didn't look all that bad, but the BSODs started happening so often that I couldn't get anything done.

Thanks again for your help.

Keep rockin,
JP

[Paul Komski]

DBAN = Darik's Boot and Nuke (http://dban.sourceforge.net/)

The hard drive manufacturer's website would have the utilities. What make is the hard drive?