Underclocked help!!!

[imported_DNICE]

First off my PC specs:

Athlon XP 1800
MSI mobo w/via 266a
512 valueram
Gforce4ti 4600
IBM 60GHD

Noticed the other day when my PC booted up that my processor was listed at 1100mghz. My proc is a Athlon XP 1800 and should list as at 1500 or 1.5 gigs. Checked my bios setting and my FSB was lowered to 100 instead of 133...made the correction and now im getting the blue screen of death. PC will only boot with a FSB of 100 therefore underclocking my proc 400+mghz!!! Toggled my CAS latency from 2-3 and getting the same results. Made sure my bios and mobo drivers are up to date as well. Does anyone have any ideas?? Any ideas here would be greatly appreciated. Even the network admin and IT manager at my work have run out of ideas.

 

[mechBgon]

Here's some ideas to check:

1) this is probably an older system... is the heatsink clogged up with dust, by any chance?

2) perhaps some other factor could be causing an overheat situation too, like dried-out thermal grease that's not doing the job well anymore. You could take the heatsink off, clean up the base and the CPU core with rubbing alcohol, and then give it a paper-thin coat of good-quality thermal grease, if you think that might be the cause.

3) is the power supply old-ish and maybe not great quality? People often see stability problems when their PSU is getting flaky. If you can find a high-quality 300W+ power supply to test with, try that.

4) maybe the motherboard is failing. My K7S5A had some odd behaviors before finally biting the dust overnight on me... it does happen sometimes. Look at the capacitors for any bulging/leaking ones too. They should be flat on both ends like a can of soup, not puffed out or bulging.


Hope that helps