Having trouble with Windows Updates? (IRQL_NOT_EQUAL bluescreen on boot?)

I remember at least one other person was getting this after windows updates. Over the holidays, I found one possible solution. I couldn't do too much back-and-forth to really find the root cause, but here's what I got.

I run Vista 64 and have a Wacom tablet.
Like you all probably know, Vista's "tablet PC" features prevent all attempts to use your tablet for things like... oh, say... any graphics software. So I disabled them.

Well, what I found out is, if I have installed the latest Wacom drivers, have installed all of the latest Windows Updates, and remove the Tablet PC Features, I reliably get that blue screen on boot. For me, the IRQL_NOT_EQUAL blue screen was entirely linked to removing the Tablet PC Features while having Wacom drivers installed.

Judging by how things went before my reinstall, all three of those must be in place. Before my reinstall, I had removed the Tablet PC features, had installed Wacom drivers, and the system was running fine. In that case, the crashes started after installing the Windows Updates.

After the reinstall, the first thing I did was run all windows updates to see if they would work. They did, so I installed the tablet drivers. Things were fine. Then I removed the Tablet PC features so I could paint in photoshop without having blue rings appear, and the blue screen came up immediately.

The Wacom driver I installed after the reinstall was the latest Release Client driver. It might work OK with an older driver. I just rebooted into Safe Mode until Vista undid the Tablet PC Features removal, and then went through the Control Panel unchecking all the settings.

 

You might try the TabletPCReview forums. Many of the members there are running Vista64 on their TabletPCs and may have had a similar experience.

 

Not familiar with those forums. I came across a few M6400 owners here who had that same blue screen at the same time I did, but I don't remember who they were or what thread it was in. I was trying to help those people out.

Besides, Tablet PC owners are very likely not installing Wacom drivers... Most of those are not Wacom hardware in the screen.

 

Nearly every TabletPC owner installs Wacom drivers (Wacom and Ntrig are the standards). My M700 uses the Wacom as did my previous Tecra M4 and Portege 3500...

 

Good to know!

By the way, are there tablet pcs available with screens higher than 1024x768 yet? Every time I shopped for them I got disappointed and gave up. (You can't even run my software at that resolution... The interfaces wouldn't fit, you'd have no screen left over for the 3D view!)

[edit]
I see the M700 comes with 1280x800, still too small. (The Maya interface can't be used very well at less than 1,000 vertical pixels, and I doubt MotionBuilder would even fit everything.)