Once I'm done writing my paper next week, I'll flash it to 12. I really need this compute to work right now, can't take a chance on a bad reflash. And as long as I don't reboot during the day, it works just fine. And when I shut down for the night and then turn it on again in the morning, it's a minor irritance.
Okay, now I've written down exactly what happens. One key question for you SerpentRoyal is if your PS/2 keyboard NumLock stays on after you shut down. Read my experience to see if that is a sign or symptom.
When I turn on the computer in the morning, after it's been off and unplugged all night, I plug it in, or turn on PSU if I had shut off the PSU previously, then I press PWR to turn on system, the PWR LED is on, HDD LED is on, and IP35's red "standby" light is on. The fans will power on, I can hear HDD whining, but nothing else. There's no NumLock light on keyboard, my USB mouse optical light doesnt' come on, and most importantly, nothing whatsoever on the screen, not even a flash or anything. In fact if I turn monitor on/off, monitor will say it doesn't have an input signal. Also by virtue of lack of keyboard light or mouse light, it's pretty clear that Window's not being loaded. I cannot turn on/off NumLock by hitting NumLock key. I call this a "no POST single boot." The system just keeps running, until the HDD LED turn off. By then I know HDD isnt' accessing, so I would press-hold PWR for 4sec. This would turn the system off.
Then I would press PWR on again, if it's all good, I'll see a flash of NumLock/CapsLock/ScrollLock lights on my keyboard, and also USB mouse light will be on, then I know immediately the BIOS will come up. A second later, the BIOS will come up, at this point NumLock will still be off, but if I hit NumLock, the light will come on. Also I know I have access to keyboard because I can interrupt POST to get into BIOS. Now if I dont' do anything, it'll load into WindowsXP just fine, and at my original setting of 333x9. Once into WinXP, the system is extremely stable at 333x9 @ 1.32v. Very nice and cool running and no problem whatsoever for rest of the day. I tend to think of this as "manual double boot" since I had to manually shut down and then restart, which is somewhat like the automatic double boot.
Now here's what happens if I was to go into BIOS after it came on successfully, and for example, change FSB from 333 to 330. Once I confirm the change in BIOS, it'll exit, and reboot. This is probably how it changes strap on the FSB. Now that's where the problem starts. Sometimes it'll work just fine. But sometimes it'll hang at a restart. The symptom is that system will reboot, NumLock will stay on, but just like previous "no POST single boot", nothing will appear on the screen, and nothing on mouse optical light. So by then I'll know it's a bad boot, and it's stuck in this mode until I turn it off.
Now, there's another possibility after I change something in BIOS, that it'll restart, shut down, but then restart like a typical double boot, but then shuts down and restart up again, so this is like a "no POST Triple Boot". And on 3rd reboot, it'll behave like before, no POST, it'll just stay put and keep running with PWR LED on and HDD LED on, but nothing on the screen, NumLock would be on. Again, that's the type of circumstance that I can't even turn off NumLock light by hitting NumLock. At that point, I would have to PWR off again, and the system shuts down. But the NumLock will stay on, and IP35 red "standby" light would stay on.
From experience, both after "no POST single boot" and "no POST Triple Boot", I know if NumLock stays on after the system is off, it's not going to boot up right. All it'll do is just repeat the no POST "single boot", and come on, but will nothing to show for on screen. So I'd have to turn PSU off, or pull the plug, either way works. Wait 5sec for PSU power to bleed off residual charges, and NumLock and IP35 red standby light would then go off.
So now I know the system is back to "Power Clean" state. So from this point on, I can do the start up sequence starts from the top again. I might get a "no POST single boot" followered by a successful manual restart. Or that it'll hit "no POST triple boot", but this usually doesn't happen often.
I haven't been able to successful duplicate all the errors by isolating the things that I do. It seems mostly related to something I change in BIOS, but it doesn't really matter what's changed in BIOS, something as simple as "disable Floppy drive" could lead to it. I think it's more having to do with simply restarting after getting in and out of BIOS.
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