I have a BIOS question.

Thanks to all who helped me get my computer up and running in the other thread.

Thanks to you guys, I now have Windows XP and almost everything else going.

I do have one conscern though at present.

Right now, whenever I boot up my computer and it goes through the memory and IDE tests it says:

"CPU is unworkable or has changed. Please recheck CPU SOFT MENU".

I did not mess with any BIOS settings AT ALL. I did try saving and rebooting with "fail-safe settings" and "optimal settings" separately and get the same error.

I tried clearing out the CMOSS and on the first boot it will say something like "CMOS not configured, loading default" the first time and then the next time it will give me the error above.

Everything *seems* to be running great right now. In the BIOS it does recognize that I have a Pentium 4 2.00 Ghz CPU. Windows XP recognizes my CPU. However, I get this message.

Any clue what it means or how I can get rid of it?

Thanks everyone.

 

usually it means that the cpu is running at a speed other than intended.

make sure your Front side bus (fsb) is set at 133 not 100.

 

Isn't this something that's auto-detected by the BIOS?

 

yes and no....

The bios knows what the cpu should be because the cpu tells it but most motherboards default to a FSB/memory setting of 100/100 as a kind of "safe mode" for setup/troubleshooting purposes.

to get full performance out of your machine you need to increase these to 133/133

.

 

until I get this straightened up though, this message isn't dangerous to my computer's components is it?

I don't feel confident messing with CPU parameters at all.

 

OK. I downloaded the latest BIOS version and it straightened everything out. I think my new computer is OK now, and I'm now in very familiar territory.

Thanks Jtoast and everyone else who has helped me in this forum. You people are the greatest!