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THE SOAP BOX 1997/06/04

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1997/06/04: NT STOP Screen Well, I am still having fun with resurrected computers.
While converting a 486 machine to a Windows NT 4 server, I encounterd the NT STOP screen, otherwise known as "the blue screen of death". This is the Windows NT critical error screen. It indicates that something has gone very wrong, usually a hardware failure or conflict.
This same machine gave me some trouble when I tried to put a large IDE hard drive in it. Once I got past that problem, another came along.
My blue screen showed this message:

	`*** STOP: 0x0000000A (0xB9EBEF60,0x00000002,0x00000000,0xFF6528E4)`
	`IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL`

I searched the Internet, but I found only a few references, none of which applied in my case. However, they gave me a general feel for what might be wrong.
I determined that the problem lay with the network card. I had encountered trouble with this network card before in this same machine (when it was a lowly Windows for Workgroups machine). At that time, the solution was to specify the memory address of the network card in CONFIG.SYS and SYSTEM.INI.
The ethernet card was set for EC00-EFFF, but the Windows NT 4 install program detected it at CC00. The EC00 setting wasn't even on the list of possibilities. Accustomed to using Windows 95 (which usually guesses pretty well), I placed my trust in the install program. Even though the card is not plug-and-play I thought that the install program must know better, so I acccepted the value of CC00.
After going further into the setup process the computer blew up with the STOP message. I tried installing again, but I still could not get past the point where it crashed.
Because I found the network address choices to be questionable, I installed a third time, but without specifying a network card. Even though a server without a network card is fairly useless, at least this choice allowed me to get all the way through the install process.
Once NT was up and running I tackled the network card problem. It was about this time that it occurred to me that instead of trying to force the software to match the card, I should change the card to match the software. So I changed the DIP switches on the network card (I told you that it was not Plug and Play!) to the address CC00.
After installing the network drivers and specifying the address CC00, of course everything worked just fine.
I guess that I thought it was odd that the NT driver supported fewer address choices than the older Windows for Workgroups driver. I had a mental block and was willing to accept that the computer was somehow smart enough to change the network card address. Lesson learned!

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