IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is almost always a driver issue. E.g. the driver has some data paged to disk and needs to retrieve it. This is handled by a Dispatch level interrupt. However if the driver has already raised the IRQ level above Dispatch level, then then dispatch level interrupt is masked, and will never be executed. This results in non-resolvable situation, and Windows blue screens the machine.
Sometimes you can see the faulting driver on the stack. Otherwise, Driver Verifier is your friend here. I think I have some old blog posts on this somewhere... Cheers Ken -----Original Message----- From: Charlie Kaiser [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 15 May 2012 1:14 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Windows Server Backup BSOD Windows 2008 R2 SP1, running on VMWare ESX1 5.0. Exchange 2010 installed, single server Exchange org. Server hdw is a dell R710. 2 datastores; one is DAS for OS and transaction logs, other is iSCSI on an iomega PX12 for the Exchange DB. DB is ~100g. NIC on VM is the E1000, not the VMXnet. This is a new install in the last month. Once we installed exchange and moved mailboxes, we tried backing up the server using Windows Server Backup. Backup is to another local disk on secondary DAS (not the same as OS/logs) Quickly got a BSOD, irq not less than or equal in netio.sys. Nominal troubleshooting did not lead to an obvious fix. Opened a case with PSS. Dump analysis led to recommendation of installing KB 2664888 and updating network driver. We installed the hotfix and performed VMware updates via update manager. No change. When running WSB, we see the initial exchange consistency check and during that time the server bogs down. Task manager shows eseutil taking 100% CPU and after maybe 10 minutes or so the BSOD occurs. MS' recommendation for our next maintenance window is to run msconfig and disable all 3rd party services/processes. We will try this. My question is this; anyone seen this issue with WSB? If we try running another backup app (i.e., backup exec) might this be better? Or is it an underlying server issue? *********************** Charlie Kaiser [email protected] Kingman, AZ *********************** ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
