"cpu is unworkable or has changed"

[realredpanda]

when i turned on my computer i got this error as i booted, and it gave me the option of continuing or going into bios, i didnt see anything to change in bios so i rebooted and continued to windows where it says my under system properties/general that my cpu is a AMD Athlon(tm) 1.09 GHZ.

i have a 2500 barton and its been so long but i think a abit motherboard.i didnt change any settings and install anything new before shuting down the last time and i dont overclock,is there a way to get it back to running at 2500?

 

[Nick5324]

I don't know about the error message, but it sounds like the FSB is set wrong. I think the 2500+ Barton uses a 166mhz FSB, double check that. It sounds like it has been set to 100 mhz FSB.

I think the 2500+ has a multiplier of 11, so:

100mhz FSB x 11 = 1.1Ghz (what you are seeing now)
166mhz FSB x 11 = 1.8Ghz (what it should be)

 

[Greenman]

Sounds like your battery has gone dead.

 

[betasub]

Have seen this message before on my Abit NF7-S v2 with an Athlon XP 2500+

It means that the BIOS does not have saved settings for your CPU frequency & is reverting to failsafe defaults (in your case an FSB of 100MHz with the default 11x multiplier).

You simply need to go into BIOS and enter your desired settings for the CPU frequency and save on exit. Once in BIOS one of the options will be for 2500+ (11x166), another for 3200+ (11x200): the former being your CPU's normal frequency, the latter a very simple overclock of 20% (& may not even need an increase in Vcore).

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Greenman
Sounds like your battery has gone dead.

Beat me to it. Put your settings back and save them. If they revert, your battery is dead. It's a $1 fix. 99% of the time the battery is a CR2032.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: Greenman
Sounds like your battery has gone dead.

Beat me to it. Put your settings back and save them. If they revert, your battery is dead. It's a $1 fix. 99% of the time the battery is a CR2032.

Yup yup yup. I had the exact problem, NF7-S 2.0, Barton 2400+.

 

[realredpanda]

i changed the fsb to 166 and that seems to have done it, i've yet to reboot but when i do if it happens again i'll be sure to get a new battery, thanks everyone

 

[FoxyProxy]

As long as your power stays on the settings will stick. I get that message on an old KTA-133 system but it's because the mobo has caps oozing stuff. On its last leg I know.

 

[Zepper]

Actually go and search on the error message in quotes in M$'s Knowledge Base. I found my solution there and it wasn't a battery... I think mine was that I had pushed the power button briefly which does something other than power down, but it looks like it is powered down. Moral is: hold that power button in for the full 4 seconds to be sure you get a true power-down. My mobo is an Abit too (KW7). Not sure how I resolved it but I think it was just a matter of doing a proper manual power off or some such. Perhaps clearing the CMOS once would have done equally well, but I didn't have a complete list of my custom settings so I didn't want to do that.

.bh.