HELLLLLLLLLLLLLPP!! What can i do???

[gaoler]

I have a HiGrade laptop, which is about 6 years and not very up to date. It's only really used for internet browsing, uploading pics from a camera and putting them on a disc.
The other day my girlfriend informed me that it had shut down, for no apparent reason, 3 times in about 20 minutes. I wasn't to worried at the time as i thought it was a simple fix, so today i decided to have a look myself. It switched on, fired up, went onto google and shortly after that shut down. as it shut down a blue screen flashed up but wasn't up long enough to read. I tried again and got the same result but this time it didn't even get as far as the internet. After several attempts to get it up and running i decided it might be best to do a full system factory restore. I've done this before and it always seemed to sort out any little running issues. It wouldn't let me do that either. The only upside was that the blue screen stayed on long enough for us to take a picture of it. It reads:

"A problem has been detected and windows has been sgut down to prevent damage to your computer.
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
If this is the first time you have this stoperror screen restart your computer. If the screen appears again follows these steps:
check to see if any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask you hardware or software manufactorer for the windows updates you may 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 components, restart your computer and press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x2D003838,0x00000002,0x00000001,0xF9400F0F)
*** NDIS.sys - Address F9400F0F base at F93E8000, DATESTAMP 41107E
Begining dump of physical memory
Physi

[jb190281]

i had a similar message on a laptop a few years ago, was told it was the 'motherboard' - im not technical - and it was beyond fixing. best get an expert to have a look.

[Mobius1]

The computer is telling you that there is a fault with the driver for NDIS.sys which, with a Google Search, seems to be the driver for your NIC or Network Interface Card. This is, as jb190281 pointed out, often part of the motherboard. This problem might be solved by you downloading and installing a newer version of the driver, which will probably be available from HiGrade, or from the Windows Update server. Have you tried running Windows Update manually? Start > All Programs > Windows Update and then choose to search ALL updates, not just recommended ones.

Of course, this might be difficult to do on the laptop itself if it crashes every few minutes. Have you tried starting it in Safe Mode (tapping F8 key just after the system beeps on startup)? Doing this should deactivate your NIC and might prevent the driver conflict occurring. That way, you would have time to go into your computer, look at the Control Panel Device Manager and see what type of motherboard/networking card is on it, and use another computer to download the drivers for it.

This is definitely a driver issue though, and it doesn't mean your laptop is dead. I've had it before with graphics drivers giving me an almost identical error and forcing the system to restart.

[gaoler]

Sorry for the late response peeps. My local computer whizz managed to sort it out for me and have been back up and running for a while now. Only cost me £40 :o)