Sudden E4300 Issues I can't fathom...

[Alexjrc]

So today my pc started freezing. I can't use it for more than 2 minutes from booting before it freezes. So I loaded the failsafe defaults of my mobo to remove all overclocking and it still happened.

I took a little peek at cpuz and it was reporting a bus multiplier of 6, rather than 9, and the voltage was all over the place, dropping whole volts here and there. It now runs at 1.2ghz I noticed that whenever the voltage peaked at what it's supposed to be, the multiplier goes back to 9 and the processor goes back to 1.8ghz. This is all happening of course, before it freezes.

Well I've exhausted every avenue I can think of currently, checking connections, playing with voltages ect. Is there something else I can try? Am I going to be forced to buy a new cpu or psu?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

2 GB Geil 800 RAM
Intel Core Duo E4300
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
Hiper 580w PSU
nVidia 8800GTS

- Alex

 

[Alexjrc]

Yeah I used that thread to overclock when I set this system up. That is what was causing the 6x though since I reset to defaults.

I just set my cpu in the bios to 1.45v with 300fsb x9. However when booted cpuz shows the settings to be 1.213v with 201fsb x 9.

Could this be a PSU issue? Every time I boot it kind of takes two tries. The lights come on, go off... then it all comes alive again.

I'm at a dead end since I don't have a capable PSU to use as a control.

 

[Alexjrc]

OK yes I was completely wrong when I said about the 6x multiplier thing. I forgot that the throttling would be back in action after resetting to defaults. However turning this off still leaves me with a freeze a few minutes after login.

This was at one point, a 3ghz 1.45v orthos stable system. The only thing I can think of since then is a bios update. What is the likelyhood that the bios may be corrupt? Would this explain the misreporting of bus speeds between bios and cpuz? I'm starting to convince myself this is a mobo issue. Would a CMOS reset be a good thing to try?

It is not overheating, it's ran a lot hotter for a lot longer before

 

[Alexjrc]

Was already on it

 

[Alexjrc]

One pass, no errors. Interestingly Memtest is reporting the same cpu speed as cpuz. Bios issues perhaps?

 

[Alexjrc]

Problem is I can't do a lot of what is mentioned because my pc won't run for long enough. I can't get safe mode to boot for some reason, it hangs on giveio.sys.

Can somebody tell me how to flash to bios version f12 from f7 without having to use windows? Can it be done via CD somehow?

 

[Alexjrc]

Problem is I can't do a lot of what is mentioned because my pc won't run for long enough. I can't get safe mode to boot for some reason, it hangs on giveio.sys.

Can somebody tell me how to flash to bios version f12 from f7 without having to use windows? Can it be done via CD somehow?

I don't even know how to find out what revision my mobo is to get the right bios. Today is a bad day for me.

Edit -

Wayne I'm going to spend all night testing various things with Ultimate Boot CD. But I'm struggling to understand why anything other than the motherboard bios would cause the complete difference in reported bios settings. Plus I am woefully out of date with bios as it is.

 

[Alexjrc]

I do feel like reinstalling windows but I'm not sure it would fix the issue where my processor isn't doing what I tell it to. cpuz and memtest both disagree with the settings in the bios. But since I'm 5 bios versions old, can someone explain to me how to flash bios without using windows? Best would be CD since I don't have a floppy to hand.

 

[Alexjrc]

Okay. First off I would like to thank everyone in this thread for taking the time to make suggestions and not bashing me for my, how should I put it... Less than experienced ways. This whole escapade has shown me just how bad I am about working out problems.

I reinstalled windows, and somehow this has not only stopped the freezing issue, but it has caused cpu z to correlate the settings in the bios exactly. My pc is now running perfectly, bar some tragically lost mp3s.

Thanks again everyone,

- Alex