Overclocking failed; continuous rebooting

[Questing]

I just replaced my motherboard and moved over my "old" cpu, memory. I added a new Plextor DVD burner and set up two new Seagate 200GB drives in RAID1. Stumped for a while on getting the Seagates working until I read the forums.:thumbsup:

Everything worked great for about 4 days. Now when I turn off the CPU, it restarts instead. The only way to turn it off is to pull the plug.:frown: When I boot, on that initial black screen with all the BIOS stuff scrolling by, it stops on a message:

Overclocking failed! Please enter Setup to reconfigure your system.
Press F1 to Run Setup.
Press F2 to load default values and continue.

I am not trying to overclock! When I press F2, and I still get the same error message. I updated the BIOS. It still happens. I am stumped.

Anybody seen this before? Any suggestions?

 

[Questing]

I just wanted to add that I'm running Windows XP Professional with SP2.

 

[Questing]

One more add: The BIOS is AMIBIOS version 08.00.09, build date 9/17/04

 

[kamper]

Going by the parts in your sig, you've got horribly mismatched parts. A 100Mhz FSB processor in a 200Mhz FSB board with 133Mhz ram. If I remember correctly what is happening is that the board is trying to run the processor at 4.0Ghz (haven't looked at this stuff in a while). Get in that BIOS and set your fsb down to 100 (unless it currently shows 800, then set it to 400).

After you've done that, ask all future questions about such things in the General Hardware forum (or Motherboards or CPU/Processors).

 

[Questing]

Yeah, I should have asked here first. Didn't find out about this site until I was trying to get the SATA drives going.

According to ASUS's site, the board is rated at 400/533/800MHz FSB and the processor is rated at 400MHz FSB. ASUS actually lists this chip as working with this board. But that's on paper. As far as the real world...?

I'll look at the BIOS and do as you instructed. Thanks Kamper.

I thought if my old cpu could work with the new board, I'd save myself some bucks and buy a new chip next year. 8-(

 

[Questing]

Thanks, Kamper. You're the best. All the settings in BIOS were set to automatic. I reset overclocking to manual and 100 (choice of 100, 200, 300). I saved it and continued on into Windows. Closed Windows Start--> Turn off computer --> Turn off computer.

It actually turned off!

Booted again; no error message about overclocking failure. I tested it again a couple times. No error messages, no freaky behavior. Who'd have thought the two weird behaviors were connected!

Now, you've got me thinking, Kamper. I thought I could buy this board now using a processor at the lowest end of what the board was scoped for, and then grow into the board next year. Was that a bad idea? Should I start saving up now for a faster CPU so the mobo and processor aren't so far apart? Does the same thing apply to RAM?

 

[kamper]

Well, your original plan was good. The motherboard does support 400Mhz fsb as you hoped, it's just that you had to tell it to do so. You're not getting the full potential of the motherboard but given the outdated processor and ram that's not what's holding you back anyways. Save up to buy a processor with an 800Mhz (200) fsb but make sure you get ram that is capable of the same while you're at it (that'd be pc3200) or you will be wasting the potential of both your board and your processor. Take your time, you're no worse off now then you were before the upgrade

 

[Questing]

Thanks again, Kamper, for the words of advice. This system may not deliver all its potential until next year but now I've got plenty of stable storage now and a DVD-burner for backup and a mobo that works. So I'm happy for now.

Thanks for helping me get the heart of the system working.