IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error message

I run windows XP and have been doing fine for about 3 months now. Earlier this morning while playing Half-Life:Counter-strike, my system locked up and then restarted. When the windows XP logo was in the loading stage i got a blue screen saying "0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL ". I thought perhaps this was a one time error so i just restarted my system and a screen came up giving me 5 options to start windows safe mode, last used settting(or something), two other safe mode options, and start normally. Each time i made a selection i would receive the same blue error screen. I tried all five of the startup options that were given to me. Nothing seemed to work. I finally shut my system down completely and now my monitor just says "no signal ". I checked all the connections for the monitor. I even pulled out my video card and put it back in to see if that was the problem. i am still getting no signal to my monitor. I tried switching to 3 different monitors and none of them recieve signals from my system. What is the problem here? Is it my video card? The power source? HD? motherboard? That is one problem. The other would be how do I get my XP back to normal without crashing down to that blue error screen again?
system information:
1.2ghz amd tbird
394 mb ram
geforce2pro nvidia
20 gb hd

a side note: my cd-rom is currently not working. im not quite sure why but it will not read anything that i put into it. just in case a solution to my problems is "insert the recovery disk "

 

Hi there


hmm..I've seen this before. A system device is trying to access an IRQ which windows XP doesn't like. Most likely its your video card.

A quote from another forum:

"The IRQL error is a driver problem, a driver has tried to use an interupt request level and does not have permission to do so.

This can be caused by incompatible or bad drivers or devices
Firstly, reboot the system and go into the BIOS and reset everything to defaults. "

So resest your BIOS first and reset everything to defaults. If this doesn't work, put an old video card into your machine (preferably a PCI card and not AGP) and see what happens then.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Quote Reference:
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=13&threadid=8911