To OC or not to OC

[CaliVW78]

Soyo P4VSA | P4 1.6 | 512PC133:( | TT V7+ | WD 5200 40gig
GeF 2 Ti 64Mb

I just got the system up and running a few days ago. The board and chip were given to me so I cannot complain about the ram that much. I played with the 1Mhz stepping and was able to go up to 2.1. Temps at idle were 35c. But, then I started getting blue screens on occasion. Then I got message that NTLDR was missing. *sigh* The only thing I have messed with to oc was the 1Mhz stepping. By doing this would there be a chance that I could mess up my hard drive? I just got through reinstalling XP and getting it back to the way I like it and really don't want to have to do it again soon. Or is it just part of that 15% return rate that WD has? Anyhow, if the oc'ing is ok, what else should I mess with to overclock? Like I said, I have only messed with the 1Mhz stepping. Thanks for the help.

[CaptBill]

Does your board have the ability to lock the pci/agp speeds so that only the fsb goes. If not you are running the speed up on the hard drive also.

[looktall]

is that 1.6 a willamette or a northwood? i assume it's a northwood. (i don't think a willamette would overclock that well)

that chip shouldn't have any dramas running at 133mhz fsb.
bump it straight to 133 and check it out.
putting it at 133 will drop your PCI/AGP back into spec. and should stop you getting the data corruption.

if it is a bit unstable, try bumping the voltage slightly.

if the board has a jumper to set 133mhz fsb, use that instead of the bios settings. some board will not change the PCI/AGP mulripliers if you use only the bios to go from 100mhz to 133mhz.

once you get it stable at 133mhz, try increasing the fsb by 5mhz at a time until it is unstable again.
then you can either give it more volts, or back off the fsb a bit and fiddle with it with 1mhz adjustments.

[CaliVW78]

Thanks for the help. I remember on my FIC board having an FSB setting where I could choose "133" if I wanted. On this Soyo board, there are no jumpers so I am stuck with the bios. For tweaking I have the following options in the bios:
-CPU Frequency Select (Manual/Auto)
-Frequency Mhz Step (100-132)
-CPU Clock Ratio (8-23)
-Auto Detect PCI/DIMM (Enable/Disable)
-Speed Spectrum (Enable/Disable)

Right now upon boot I get 100x16.0. CPU Freq. is "Manual," Freq. Mhz Step is "100," CPU Clock Ratio is "10," Auto Detect PCI/DIMM is "Enabled," and Speed Spectrum is "Disabled."

Elsewhere in the bios I have settings for:
-DRAM Clock/Drive Control
-AGP & P2P Bridge Control
-CPU $ PCI Bus Control
Should these be messed with at all? So how would I go about setting the FSB to 133? I assume this is done with the Mhz stepping? But it only goes to 132. So do I mess with the clock ratio as well? Im still fairly new to this so I apologize. Thanks again.