Boot disk / system recovery failure

Hi, first time on forums, first time I've needed expert help with a PC.
I'm very newbish with technical computer stuff, have pretty much no
knowledge or experience with it, so bear with me.

I run vista 32 bit. I'm pretty sure it's Vista personal (PC didn't
actually come with a Vista disk). I only use it for music and games,
basic stuff. It's a Compaq.
System specs: AMD Phenom Processor 9650
3072MB DDR2
500GB 3GB Hard drive
Nvidia Geforce 9300GE 3D

It shat itself recently, it wouldn't boot, so i borrowed the Vista
Business disk from my dad to repair it/disk boot, and it worked fine,
that was a couple days ago. Today it happened again, except it won't
repair the same way. I start it up, it goes to the Compaq startup screen
with 4 options; [Esc] Boot menu, [F9] Diagnostics, [F10] Setup , [F11]
System recovery. Except I can never go to the diagnostics or system
recovery menus, i press the keys and nothing happens. Then when i don't
press anything it goes to a black screen with "Disk boot failure, insert
system disk and press enter", so i do. Then it says "Windows is loading
files" with a white bar below, once that's done it goes to the Microsoft
Coporation green load bar that scrolls across over and over. Then it
suddenly stops for a few minutes and a blue screen appears saying -

"A problem has been detected and Windows has shut down to prevent
damage to your computer
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart
your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:
Check to see if any new hardware or software is properly installed. If
this is a new installation ask your hardware or software manufacturer
for any windows updates you might need. If problems continue disable or
remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory
options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to
disable or remove coponents, restart your computer, press F8 to select
advanced startup options, then select safe mode. (pressing F8 does
nothing for me)
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x87995395)
*** nvstor.sys - Adress 87995395 base at 87991000, Datestamp 46671a61"

Then it stays on that screen until i restart it, and the same thing
happens again. I think the problem might be some games i recently
installed, I found some old games from my childhood in my closet and
gave them a go. They were 'Roller Coaster Tycoon' (the original) + patch
update, 'Moon Project' (RTS) & 'King's Quest: Mask of Eternity' (Really
old RPG). They seemed pretty dodgey on vista, problems starting up or
saving and such, king's quest didn't even work. Plus I installed 'Age of
Conan' plus updates for it (New MMO) and the program 'Azure/Vuze'
(Torrent program). So before this I never had problems, had the PC for
about 2 months now.

Any help/suggestions would be awesome, sorry for making the thread so
long.
Thanks a bunch. :)
- Richard.


--
Rixx

'nvstor.sys' is the mentioned culprit there , which suggests that you have
some dodgy Nvidia graphics card drivers installed.

If you can somehow get the machine to boot up via any of those recovery
options, then installing the latest drivers for your 'Nvidia Geforce
9300GE 3D' may stop future blue screens.

No, nvstor.sys is the driver for the hard disk controller, so he's got a
nVidia nForce chipset as well.

He could use CPU-Z to find out which one, and then update the drivers for
it.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Another possibility is that the hard drive is failing, so using diagnostic
software on that is worth a try too.

ss.

Yep, you're right. Good call.

In any version of Windows (at least since Windows 2000), just press the
Windows logo key (sometimes labeled "Start") and hold it while pressing the
Break key (usually labeled Pause/Break in the upper right portion of most
keyboards). In other words:
<Win>+<Break>

This should pop up the System Properties screen which tells you, among other
things, the exact edition of Windows that is installed and running on your
computer. When asking for help, please tell us that exact version,
including whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit (further down, under System type.

Thank you for this complete information! We usually have to ask for this in
a later post. Some guru here (not me!) should be able to give you excellent
advice based on this. If you'd like to do some research and learn more
about the problem, use Live Search or Google or some other search engine and
search for "Stop 0xD1". Or go to http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm (on the
Aumha.org website run by MVP Jim Eshelman) for lots of information about
Stop Codes, including links to other resources.