stupid computers.....

Hows it goin guys? Im semi-fluent with comptuers but not very well...
Heres the specs..
Amd athlon 900 mhz cpu
768 megs ram (256 x 3)
Geforce fx 5200 (128 meg)
Sound Blaster Live!
Direct x 9.0c
Via Vt8371 motherboard
Linksys nc100 lan card
40.0 gig hard drive
12.0 gig hard drive
Aoc spectrum 7glr monitor
az-tech fm tuner card (using radiator)
Samsung lg 52x32x52 cd burner
16x dvd rom drive
Windows xp Pro sp1 ( i hate sp2...)

Now she scoots for an older computer, i can play half life 2 at 1024/768 at like 35 fps
and i can also play doom 3 at 800 x 600 decently....
Can play like all new games on this, shes a nice lil homebrew..

But anyways....... I'm the person that crashed Xp when it was considerd uncrashable............ But now i cant get it to stop form crashing. I just reformated about 6 monts ago, and im getting a new error. "Driver Irq Less than or not equal" (or Driver_Irq_Less_than_or not_equal)... thats what it shows when it mini-dumps........ It never mini-dumps if im playing a game. But if the computers doing nothing or if im paying out the nose to get songs from napster it will crash. Now i would jsut reformat..... But i use the 40 gig drive as my prmiary drive, and the 12 gig as my backup.... One problem. I have 16 gigs of music. So i cant put that on my back-up drive....... So how would i fix this? (And i hate re-installing xp over it-self..... its fubar's itself....)
Thanks,
Bill

Have you tried a Restore? If not, start there.

You can buy a very cheap USB external hard drive for backup purposes, or write to multiple DVD-Rs.

Is the error a blue screen saying that, on boot, or a windows shell message?

I do not think a fresh install is the way to go until you have confirmed it is definately a software only problem. It could still very well be an easy to fix hardware issue at this stage.

IF you remember the "Blue screen of death" for windows 98? Thats what its like, except there is no continue.... you have to hit the reset button on your computer and reboot.......... Its a blue screen that pops up........ ITs fills the whole window and says "YOU F**KED UP".... lmao... i wish.... and it says windows has generated "blah blah blah" error in "Blah blah blah"..... Sometimes it creates en error log in the windows event veiwer.... Like heres an example of an error on the aftermath of internet explorer (which is why i use firefox... "Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 6.0.2600.0, faulting module , version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000.
For more information, see Help and Support Center.") But it wont show one for the error i get for the irq_less_than_or_equal.....
Bill
*edit* No i havent used restore. Everytime i use it my comp fubar's it self up worse than before i used system restore

If it is the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), in Windows XP, I would suggest that the fault it more likely to be hardware than software. Could be a dud RAM module or something? Either way, I don't think formatting and re-installing the OS will help. I recommend taking it to a hardware professional and getting it tested.

Yeah.. its already gone to a professional.... the memory has been tested...... The motherboards fine, the cpu is fine, the only thing that was found wrong with my computer was the fan on the backside of the tower was going bad. But that got replaced.... When he had it, he had no problems, no bsod or anything............ even when he had this computer at over full compacity.... (watching a dvd, downlaoding a couple songs on napster, having winamp playing a song, having windows media player play a song, downlaoding all the sp1 updates, having firefox and I.E. open, having starcraft, diablo II and Quake III Arena open.) He said my computer couldnt even breath, but there was no errors or bsod......... Like i said, i have 768 megs of ram, but i also have about 3.5 gigs of virtual memory........ He said he had every type of application running that he could to see if it would crash.... But this isnt jsut a once-in-awhile thing... This winds up happening on every installation, No matter what installation disk of windows xp you use..... I also have spybot S&D, and Ad-aware SE on my computer, With AVG..... Theres nothing there (but i knew there wouldnt be)...
Bleh... lol..... i would upgrade this computer, but i gotta keep 2 cars running, and on the road.
Bill