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FSB stopped running at 266 MHz

J

jgutsell

Junior Member
Last August, with the help of this site, I built a PC with
Asus A7M266,
Athalon 1.3 GHz,
512 MB of DDR RAM
PSU 300w
I set the FSB to 266 MHz, and it ran Windows 2000 Pro just fine.
Then last night, Windows locked up just before it finished shutting down. Today I started it up and the Award BIOS displayed the following message:
"During the last bootup, your system hung for an improper CPU external speed setting. Your system is now working in safe mode (BUS: 100 MHz, DRAM: 100 MHzs, PCI: 33 MHz). To optimize the system performance and reliability, make sure the CPU speed conforms to the specifications of your CPU."

How do I determine the cause of the problem so I can fix it and restore the FSB to 266? This PC is running a lot slower right now than it did before of course.
I'm fairly confident that the box is cool enough. The office is rather chilly. The box has 4 fans including the CPU fan and the air coming out the back never seems particularly warm.
 
Hmmmm. You weren't overclocking? Do you have a decent power supply and quality RAM? What are the Temps via your hardware monitor?

It won't hurt to put the settings back to optimum, the worst that happens should be failsafe mode again.

You might flash board with the latest bios.

Weird tho...I get that a lot, but only when I'm "tweaking" bios settings. 😀

-Rhi
 
When I built the box, I verified that its 300w PSU was certified by AMD.

I don't have any precise way of monitoring the CPU temperature. Asus claims to sell a front panel LED display to monitor that sort of thing, but I've been unable to find anyone who actually stocks it. But when I feel the air blowing out of the box, it never feels particularily warm. Does that mean anything?

I've heard that dirty contacts on expansion boards can sometimes cause CPU problems. I'm thinking of pulling them all out and cleaning them with alcohol--though I don't have time for that right now. I'm trying finish a Web site.
 
Are you sure there isn't some place in bios that shows your temps? Section called Hardware monitor?

What are your memory timing settings? Are they aggressive? You might want to turn it back up and run a program called Memtest-86. The download makes a boot floppy and runs as a dos program. Don't have a link or I would post it. Do a quick search and I am sure its easy to find.

You might try bios defaults (then turn up you fsb back to 133(266). See if something else is causing problems. But it sounds like some kind of hardware monitoring kicked in and turned you down (usually caused by overtemp for Athlon's).
 
The BIOS hardware monitor reports this:
RAM 80.5 degrees F
CPU 99.5F
CPU fan speed 4960-5000 RPM

On the Advanced screen, the BIOS reports:
Operating Frequency Setting 100 MHz
CPU Clock Multiplier 9.0x
System Ferequency 100 MHz
System Performance Normal mode
These are not the orginal settings. Unfortunately, I never wrote down the original settings, but I do recall that I entered "266" for one of these values. I generally used the default settings until I gain a better understanding of what these things mean.

 
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