I have a laptop that does not have a built in wireless card and uses the PCI slot for connectivity. The problem is whenever I put the wireless card in the PCI slot I get an IRQL error when starting the computer up. I've reinstalled the drier for the card and the PCI slot as well but the same error message comes up. It only comes up when I put the card in whenever I take the card out the laptop boots up normally and I am able to access everything. Looked at my device manager and nothing appears out of whack. So does anybody have any clues as to what the problem could be? Could the wireless card just be bad?
Go into your bios settings and check your boot up priorities. When you start your computer, it should say press [ key ] to get into setup or bios. When your into the boot up menu, it should look something like this; 1. external xxx 2. hard drive 3. cd-rom Remove the external xxx and put your HDD as the first and that might fix your problem.
Do you have another PCI card (or can you borrow one) to try with? If it boots normally with a different PCI card, then you can assume it is the card. If it continues to fail, then you can assume it is the slot.
What is the exact error your laptop gives? That might help us. You shouldn't have to be changing any hardware location settings for network cards nowadays. Gone are the days of Windows '95 when... Ha. I had a flashback. But it seems to me like there's something wrong with the motherboard/slot. Follow bobrek's advice, I think.
I'll see if my friend will let me borrow his card because I know it works. I don't think it is the boot settings because it gets to the login screen then I get the BSOD with the IRQL error message and the laptop restarts. I noticed that under Device Manager the PCI slot's driver was not working correctly before I began working on the laptop. I did a right click and update drivers and then it was listed as working correctly but I still get the same error messages.
Incidentally, I had a similar issue with a desktop. Whenever I had an AC powered Belkin USB hub plugged into any one of 6 USB slots, the computer would hang at startup time even if the AC plug was removed. As long as the USB cable was plugged in, it would hang. Plugging a different USB device in works fine.
If I remember correctly, the card could be plugged in as long as the driver was uninstalled. I may be wrong about that but I'll try it again when I get home.
