Firefox is shutting my PC off

[kaveman1969]

Thanks. I'll give them a call and see what they say.

[BC_Programmer]

It could also be a motherboard issue, but that's kind of remote. only way to test would be to use the supposedly bad RAM module in another PC.

[kaveman1969]

I just got the blue screen again in FF. "IRQ is not equal to"  This is with the stick of RAM that tested bad out of the machine.

This is driving me crazy. I'm really at a loss now. New install of Windows XP yesterday as well.
How should I go about troubleshooting this?

Thanks.

[patio]

Sure...
Replace the RAM...

PS: It's not FireFox doing this....

[kaveman1969]

All I was saying is that it only has happened when using FF. I guess if I used another browser as much as FF, at some point it would happen with that one as well.

Any ideas on troubleshooting this? This is a fairly new thing, last month or so. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[killerb255]

Edit: Never mind...I should have read the entire topic...(I should have learned that by now...)

Anyway, there is no further troubleshooting if a stick of RAM is bad.  Replace RAM.  That's it.  No voodoo.  No other explanations.

[kaveman1969]

Did that. Still getting a blue screen that won't let me do anything but reboot.

[patio]

Did that. Still getting a blue screen that won't let me do anything but reboot.

What is the BSOD message in it's entirety ? ?

New or used stik of RAM ? ?

Are they in the correct slots ? ?

[kaveman1969]

I haven't gotten the blue screen today, but the one I got yesterday said that windows was being shut down to protect my PC with the message "IRQ not equal to or less than"...that's all I remember.

Both sticks of Ram were purchased earlier this year from Tiger Direct.

My PC will only hold two sticks. I ran Memtest with both sticks in and it failed on test #4. Removed the stick in bank 2 and re-ran Memtest.
The stick in the first bank passed twice with no errors at all.

Took stick out of bank 1 and replaced it with the stick from bank 2 to be sure. Ran Memtest and it passed the first time, so I ran it again and it failed. Ran it a third time and it failed again.

Removed that stick and re-installed the original stick from bank 1 back into bank 1, ran Memtest one last time and it passed with no errors.

Like I said, no blue screen today, yet. But I did get it twice after testing the memory yesterday.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

[patio]

Stik #2 is faulty...

[kaveman1969]

Thanks, lol. I was starting to get that impression myself.

[kaveman1969]

Not to point fingers, but I got to thinking about what I had changed on my system in the past month, and the thing that stuck out was switching to AVG 9 free edition.

I removed that yesterday as well, and my PC has been fine since.

Obviously my memory failed, but after removing the stick yesterday, I still had issues. After removing AVG, none so far and it's going on 16 hours. Much longer than I've gone without an error this week.

I'll give it a few days and see what happens, but all seems well right now.

[2x3i5x]

Odd.

Grab yourself another antivirus. A computer can't go without one. 

[BC_Programmer]

Odd.

Grab yourself another antivirus. A computer can't go without one. 

Yes it can.

It's just not a good idea for most people.

[kaveman1969]

I installed Avast anti-virus, and so far everything is working fine. I Googled people having issues with AVG and found a lot, none with my particular problem though.

It is strange, but I'm glad my PC is running OK....for now anyway.

Thanks to all who offered assistance.