When Windows experiences a fatal error relating to damaged/faulty device drivers it traditionally results in the blue screen of death – that fatal error screen which gives you no other option than to attempt rebooting the PC. This article details one solution to an IRQL-related blue screen exception that ultimately may require using third party software to remedy.

This issue occurred on an old Windows XP machine which had been running well until I installed software for burning CD’s. Upon starting the application the system went straight to the blue screen page with a message saying that the driver interrupt request level (IRQL) is not less or equal. IRQL’s are used within the PC’s thread processing to determine the ordering of how processes and applications are run.

From some initial research on the web, some users had reported this problem occurring due to the page file issues, faulty device drivers or hardware (in particular RAM memory issues). As the pair of RAM modules were identical and had been working for two years I assumed this wasn’t the issue. This only left the page file issue and device drivers.

I decided to rectify the device drivers first. I tried updating the drivers via Window’s Device Manager but this didn’t fix the issue. My assumption is that a full system reboot cleans out the page file cache so that discounts that solution.

At this point it was clear that the root of the problem related to device drivers and registry key entries that could not be fixed by simply re-installing software. I would have to use a registry repair tool.

I opted for Reimage which includes tools for registry and device driver repairs. The product scanned the PC and found multiple missing/faulty registry keys. It also reported several device drivers being out of date – these didn’t relate to the CD burner device but it was worth updating them anyway.

The scan and repair process took 30 minutes to complete. After a system reboot the PC started and all applications were working correctly, without any sign of a blue screen error.

Some of the key things to realize about blue screen issues relating to the kernel/IRQL issues are:
-    Back up the registry before and after any product installation just in case it becomes corrupted
-    Give preference to new application installations rather than the ones that come supplied with hardware. In this instance, newer software from the vendor’s website did not have this issue.
-    If all else fails, use registry repair or pc maintenance software to analyze and repair the issue.