BSOD on new Windows 7 install

Pusspa said:

have you done a memtest on your ram? when i used to see 'irq_less_than...' errors was from ram problems. You could try just using one stick of ram or swapping slots. The only other time i had this was problem was with overclocking, are you overclocking any settings? (cpu, gpu or ram)

I am not overclocking or underclocking anything. I just ran memtest86 and it passed all tests.

Jonathan_King said:

Ah, a network problem.

Remove Avast with this tool: http://files.avast.com/files/eng/aswclear5.exe

Install MSE instead: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials

Download these drivers: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...=3062&lang=eng

Then, go to Device Manager, and uninstall your current network adapter drivers. Then install the drivers you just downloaded.

Thanks for the tip. Have you seen this specific behavior before? It seems like it has something to do with being on a local network with a macbook. There are people who posted in the comments on this site that had the same problem (Unable to access Network share on MacOS X from Windows 7 | Windows Reference). Unfortunately there's no way of knowing what AV or firewall they were running.

I will give MSE a try and reinstall the drivers for my wireless card. Thanks, everyone, for your helpful suggestions and prompt responses.

What's the consensus on using ZoneAlarm firewall? I tend to like it's intrusive nature so that I know exactly what's trying to access the internet from my computer. I've never had problems with it in the past. Could this also be contributing to the problem? Is the built-in windows firewall good enough?

Well, it's been two days since I did another clean install and decided to go with MSE and Windows firewall in place of Avast and ZoneAlarm. So far I have not had any BSOD's at all. I'm going to give it another week or so of testing and then we might be able to definitively say that one of these was the cause of my problem. Thanks again, Jonathan and Carl, for your help in troubleshooting this annoying issue. I'll keep you posted with what happens in the next week or so.