Hello everybody,

I'm having some serious problems with my Acer Laptop.
2 days ago after a few hours of normal PC work (internet,word) I shut the PC down. The Shutting Down screen appeared and I went away for a few minutes.
When I came back, I saw the BSOD on the screen.
Id read: irql_not_less_or_equal
***STOP : 0x0000000A (0xFFFFFFE0, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x82458960)

Here a screenshot: http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4396/bsod.jpg

I tried several things (safe mode, last known good configuration etc) but nothing worked. I started the Vista Repair CD, but the repair failed. The Memory Diagnostics Tool said that everything was OK.
Then I installed Windows Vista Home Premium on another partition (on the same HDD). That actually worked.
So now if I start the PC first comes one single Beep tone and then I can choose between the two operating systems of which one works and the other doesn't.
I have a Phoenix Bios with system Version v.0.3508.
I really don't know what to do, because I can't find any help on the web and I am not good at this stuff.
I would be very grateful if so helped me!
If you need more information just ask me, I will be online for the whole day.

p.s: I'm going to the US in a few days and I absolutely need my laptop by then.

p.s: I want to run the ultimate boot cd from USB but I dont know how this works

Try running the repair again and let us know the details of why the repair process failed (there's a link to it on the final screen before you reboot).

The following presumes that the hard drive and it's files are intact and able to be accessed.....

We can go about this 2 ways (which aren't mutually exclusive):
- we can migrate your stuff over to the new Vista installation (probably the fastest way)
- we can work on fixing the old installation.

The difference here will be where we keep your data. If we move it to the new installation and then fix the old one, we'll have to move it back when we're done.

Let us know what you'd like to do and we'll get started.
In short, if you choose to move stuff to the new Vista install, you'll take ownership of the files from the old installation, then "move" them over to the new installation.

I say "move" instead of "copy" to prevent you from having to sort through the different versions at a later date (if we repair the old copy of Vista).

Thanks for the quick reply!
I'will run the repair another time, but I didnt really understand what link I should copy here?

I'd like to get my old Windows fixed if that works.

irql_not_less_or_equal error indicates a hardware problem and often means faulty RAM. It may be a problem with actual hardware or the driver for that hardware. Even though you have the OS installed and working now, that same error may re-occur, especially if it's a RAM issue.

If it were me I would make sure I had everything I wanted backed up to some external media and start running extensive hardware tests. I would focus on an extended RAM test over several hours and a hard drive test just to make sure the main components of my system were not as fault.

Recently, I had an old Esoniq sound card in my system. Kept getting BSOD's and had a heck of a time troubleshooting the problem. After reinstalling Vista, I noticed I got a BSOD right after the sound driver was installed. I removed the sound card and have not had a problem since.

The Bugcheck 9f is a Driver Power State error.
The most common cause (IME) is corrupted video drivers.
-Download the latest version of the video drivers for your system from the manufacturer's website
-Uninstall your current video drivers from Control Panel...Programs...Uninstall a program
-Install the freshly downloaded drivers
-Reboot and wait to see if it worked

Beyond that, please zip up and upload the unintelligible file so we can have a look at it.

I have already checked the ram several times with the windows tool and there was no error. What other tool can I use? I wanted to try the ultimate boot cd from USB but I don't know how to get it on the usb-stick.

How can I update my nvidia card, if I can't get into my system?
Besides, the OS that I installed on the other partition doesn't recognize my video card but only a VGA nvidia card with only 14mb.
So how do I get that card updated?`
I've already had several problems with the thing. Everytime I'm playing a game, the screen freezes for a few seconds and then says that the video driver didn't respond anymore and had successfully been restored.

You can boot to the Ultimate Boot CD which will give you basic testing tools to find possible hardware problems:

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

If you can boot to the newly-installed Vista OS, you can go to Nvidia.com and download the drivers for your card.

Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

Originally Posted by Curufin

I have already checked the ram several times with the windows tool and there was no error. What other tool can I use? I wanted to try the ultimate boot cd from USB but I don't know how to get it on the usb-stick.

How can I update my nvidia card, if I can't get into my system?
Besides, the OS that I installed on the other partition doesn't recognize my video card but only a VGA nvidia card with only 14mb.
So how do I get that card updated?`
I've already had several problems with the thing. Everytime I'm playing a game, the screen freezes for a few seconds and then says that the video driver didn't respond anymore and had successfully been restored.

You can run memtest86+. It is far better than the Windows one, or at least it detected errors on my machine that neither the OEM diagnostics nor Windows could detect. The problems I had then disappeared when I replaced the faulty stick. Test the sticks one by one.

Looking through your dump files, I see several bugcheck errors. I'm fairly certain you're having RAM issues. Just an educated guess.