please help. i dont know what to do...

salutation everyone!
i have a little problem i have an abit th7 board with a p4 1.6a p4 chip it was working fine for a year or so and one day when i turn it on. i get this strange message during the boot up part. the msg is " cpu is unworkable or has been changed .Please recheck - CPU SOFT MENU" then on the bottom of the screen it say press f1 to continue, del to enter into set up. i have never over clock this chip yet. when i press f1 windows 2k will load and shortly after the window200 pross screen. i would get a blue screen saying "** stop :0x000007b and so on.

i have tried to replace a new hardisk from a working pc i get the blue screen. i'm running out of ideas. i hope some1 could help me or did i get p4 1.6a northwood kick the bucket on me??

normally the cpu is unworkable message means something in the system has changed and bios is not in agreement. normally this is fixed by simply going into bios and saving and exiting. this way bios has the "correct" settings and will boot normally.

i'm kind of confused by the rest of your post can you reword it please?

ok here is the facts.
my cpu is a 1.6a

my bios setting
cpu operating speed 800(100)
external clock 100mhz 33.33
multiplier factor 8x
agpclk/cpuclk (agp clock ) 2/3 (66.6 mhz)
speed error hold disable

cpu power supply User define
-core voltage 1.525v

rdram bus freq auto
dirential current 6x

with these bios setting i get the message
cpu is unworkable.
and if i ignore the message and goto the windows 2000 boot up screen it will give me a blue screeen. ....

the current bios i'm using is 38.

well the multiplier should be set to 16, 16X100= 1.6A.

if it does it again after you fix that then maybe the cmos battery is dead

crazy pc
i changed the multiplier
i get teh same blue screen msg

**stop 0x000007b(0xf7dfd00 ) inaccessable_boot_device

so i took the hard disk and stick it onto my other system it was working fine. but when i stick the hard disk onto the 1.6a i get the msg the blue screen msg.

Well I got the same problem when I changed my bios but got it to work (similiar problem I think). Try clearing your cmos (on your mobo, your manual shoul dhave instructions) if you didn't oc it or anything. Mine started to work after i cleared cmos (i got unstablea problems under win xp).

well i reset the cmos. i'm still getting the blue screen msg *unbootable device* this happen right about when win2k loading screen is about to be finish..

well i know it cant be the cpu because i tried running "knopix* from the cd drive it is working fine...

i'm thinking it could be the hardrive.
i hope some1 can shed some light on this problem of mine...

I would check the memory...

Go into the bios, load optimized defaults, decrease RAM timings (ex. 2.5 -> 3) I'm not familiar with RDRAM, so I can't tell you exact.
Still no go? Try some other RAM...

unfortunately i dont have any spare rdram around.

but if the ram was bad how can i load into linux? and the ram check at start shows the ram is ok