'Wrong' CPU speed?

  First, apologies for the cross-posting, but I have no idea at all what
the cause of this might be, so would appreciate as much feedback as
possible please.

When I try to do a cold reboot on my 4 year-old 'Mesh Athlon 1800 PC',
it powers up for only a second or two then closes down. Pressing the
power-on button then has no effect at all!  Eventually, after various
arbitrary (desperate) operations like pulling the plug at PC and/or
mains socket, repeatedly pressing Power-On, taking the side off and
peering inside, praying, etc, it *does* restart, but goes straight to
BIOS instead of WinXP Home. There I read a message to the effect that
it is starting in 'Safe Mode' (?) because it detected the wrong CPU
speed. Yet the setting is the usual one, 1533 MHz. There are only two
other options, 1300 MHz (I think), and 'Manual'. After pressing F10 to
'Save and restart' the BIOS, XP loads and all then seems well.

I rarely power off my PC anyway, but now I'm reluctant to do so at
all!

In case it's relevant, I should also mention that the only other time
I ever saw this message was a month ago when my CPU fan failed, and I
got the same symptoms on restarting. But, after repairing the fan, I
installed Motherboard Monitor, and now I can see my fan is running OK.

I'm not sure what other info might be useful, but FWIW here is an
extract from my system spec:
CPU = AMD Athlon XP1800+ with 512MB PC2100 DDR memory, m/b = ASUS
A7A266-E, BIOS = Award Software with ASUS A7A266-E ACPI BIOS v 1009,
System Chipset = M1647 ALiMAGiK 1 AGP System Controller, Buses =
AGP/PCI/USB, L2 On-board Cache = 256kB ECC synchronous write-back.

Any advice greatly appreciated please.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

 Have you checked the battery on your motherboad? After 4 years, it could be
too low to maintain your BIOS settings.

 

This model is a shite motherboard quite honestly - I've had one and my Dad
had one and both would throw up the "Wrong CPU Speed" error from time to
time regardless of the battery but yes, you should replace it. I never
overclocked it btw and mine was the standard A7A266 not the -E version.
Another thing to watch for is it always tends to report temperatures that
are rather high no matter what you do. I put a hefty copper heatsink in my
Dads PC rated up to 3.4ghz and still it runs 55c idle.

 
Terry
1 Check your CMOS battery, may be flat.
2 I have seen weird symptoms before on PC's that run 24/7 when they have
been eventually shut down.

One see's recommendations for leaving PC's permanently on, however
experience has taught me a PC that has been running 24/7 for 3/4 years or
more will most likely fail the next time it is turned off for more than a
brief period.

Personal examples that come to mind are 3 Point of Sale PC's that 'died' 3
days after being pulled out, and two Gas station PC's that died within ten
days of being turned off for the first time in 3 years.

Another example I can think of is the Flourescent light life that caught
several American skyscraper owners out.
Some bright spark worked out that a Flourescent lamp gave (about 20% if
memory serves) longer life if you left them running 24/7.
Great so they wired all the lights to one switch so they reduced the number
of times they were turned on and off (on the basis that as long as one
employee was at work ....)
Trouble was they got their 20% extra life alright but it was 20% of
'quarter' of the lights life because one quarter of their life was used
lighting up empty unused workspace at night and another half was used during
the day when sunlight did the same job anyway. (they got 30% of the normal
'evening use only' life for lamps )

I would seriously suggest you get into the habit of turning the PC
completely off each night unless you have a specific requirement for running
it for such long periods.
You may experience a period of flakeyness as the PC settles back into the
new work cycle, but it will be worth it in the long run.

Cheers
Paul.

 
I would imagine it would more be the case that the PC had developed a fault
and restarting it found the fault, rather than caused it.


Sounds unlikely to me.

Michael