warning overclock fail message on pc start up

[sensei punk]

whenver i put on my pc , it comes on but nothing comes on, it stays on for a few seconds, turns off by itself & then comes on by itself again at which point i get the warning overclock fail message & it just stays on the bios startup screen and it asks to either press F2 to load default values and continue or to press del to go to the bios, i've tried loading default values to continue which does make my pc boot up normally but when i switch it off & turn it on again i'm back to the overclock fail message, i tried pressing del to go to bios , save & exit & it boots up but when i turn off my pc im back to overclock fail. I looked it up a bit on the net & saw a suggestion to clear the cmos by removing the battery , i did that & it worked , no more overclock fail message anymore & my pc boots up normal but my problem is now that when i play games , they work slow yet those same games used to work perfect or with little slow down before i removed the cmos battery, how can i get my pc to run those games like they used to work before?

I have a biostar G31 - M7 TE motherboard with amibios version 08.00.14,
nvidia geforce 9600 gt 1gb gddr3 graphics card with vga bios version 62.94.3C.00.00 ,
2gig 800mhz ddr2 ram
intel core 2 duo E8400 3ghz processor

[Psycogeec]

from your desciption you indeed did have some incorrect settings for the hardware configuration.
the machine was starting up, tests a few things, then bailed out, and went back to standard, presenting you with the OC failed message.
Note: it did not Have to be overclocked actually to get the message, just that it failed to post.

now you clear out the whole thing, and your back to standard. which is often also Slower than even "normal" speeds.

so first make a few minor changes in the bios, and save it. go back into the bios and see they are as you set them.
shut-down turn off ALL the power, and turn it back on, back in the bios make sure that all the settings all stayed.
this is to insure that the battery is re-mounted properly and the cmos jumper is in the correct location.

now proceed to reset the bios to much better settings, or to overclock it carefully . ??? that is all that can be said.
you just have to adjust things , which can take a long time, and get everything perfect. if they arent all set right, then at different places in the booting it can fail.
following a guide for the motherboard or similar system, will give you a whole lot of info, to make adjustements.

things you could supply now so we can see what is going on.
pictures of CpuZ showing some idea of your settings now.
.

[sensei punk]

from your desciption you indeed did have some incorrect settings for the hardware configuration.
the machine was starting up, tests a few things, then bailed out, and went back to standard, presenting you with the OC failed message.
Note: it did not Have to be overclocked actually to get the message, just that it failed to post.

now you clear out the whole thing, and your back to standard. which is often also Slower than even "normal" speeds.

so first make a few minor changes in the bios, and save it. go back into the bios and see they are as you set them.
shut-down turn off ALL the power, and turn it back on, back in the bios make sure that all the settings all stayed.
this is to insure that the battery is re-mounted properly and the cmos jumper is in the correct location.

now proceed to reset the bios to much better settings, or to overclock it carefully . ??? that is all that can be said.
you just have to adjust things , which can take a long time, and get everything perfect. if they arent all set right, then at different places in the booting it can fail.
following a guide for the motherboard or similar system, will give you a whole lot of info, to make adjustements.

things you could supply now so we can see what is going on.
pictures of CpuZ showing some idea of your settings now.
.

i'll load up some pics , the jumpers are correct though , i didnt mess with those , i only removed the battery & put it back, i dont think it was incorrect settings that caused the overclock fail message coz it only started doing that when a clever brother of mine broke the ide cable in the pc & then put the pc on

[Psycogeec]

coz it only started doing that when a clever brother of mine broke the ide cable in the pc & then put the pc on


he what? tell more , the more you tell what happened , the more the people here can try and figure out why your getting the symptoms you have.
and computer stories are fun anyways :cool:

[sensei punk]

ok , well he was plugging in a ide hard drive that a friend had lent him , he pulled the ide cable out of the hard drive i had in the pc already without a prob & plugged in the other hard drive , put the pc on etc , hard drive worked fine , though it needed formatting coz it was corrupted, put the pc off to remove the hard drive, he pulled out the ide cable & the part that plugs into the hard drive broke off the cable & stayed stuck in the hard drive. Now my main hard drive in the pc is a small 40gig ide hard drive , use a small hard drive coz of viruses from college so if i need to format & reinstall then i dont have much important data on it, the secondary plug on the ide cable broke off , so he put the pc on & thats when it started giving the overclock fail message. I replaced the cable with another ide cable later that day & the pc worked fine then a few days later it started with the overclock fail again , the thing is though , i've never overclocked it , i've used it exactly as is from the day i bought the pc, anyway , heres the cpuZ pics

[Psycogeec]

looks ok, from what i can tell. Mabey somone else can see something wrong there? i do not.
You could do some OC tweaking, to make it faster, but if it is Dead slow, then that should be fixed first, before complicating things.

reiterate the exact problem
1) are you getting the Fail at boot any more ?

2) define slow for your game? slow loading, slow frame rate?
3) slow in high texture memory areas? like very detailed large worlds,
4) or slow in the hard to render areas? like water, fog, fire, lighting.
5) eratic slow? like slowing because it is "background loading"

Have you run a check using Dxdiag The directX diagnostics ?

after the hard drive issue, and using IDE i would wonder if your not stuck in a PIO mode or something where the drive is not going full speeds.
If it is IDE, you need to go to the Device manager, and look really well at the IDE items in there, the controller, the primary and secondary, and the disk, and check for the drivers, the DMA and Write cache stuff. and for any compatability modes (drivers) that are happening. as any of those could slow the whole thing down.

6)what is the operating system?
.

[sensei punk]

ok by slow , i mean games just work slow , a lot of slow down no matter how much i tone down the graphics in the games settings or even setting the graphics card to performance in the nvidia control panel, i have run dxdiag & it reports no errors, not getting the overclock fail anymore & i'm using windows 7 eternity ultimate 32bit

[Psycogeec]

Ok if you checked Dxdiag and ran all the tests, for direct draw and direct 3d, then the only thing i can think of is to run a 3D benchmark and compare your results with similar graphics card item (thier normal to your normal)

another thing that might be usefull in this situation, would be to run a Wide overall benchmark like passmark or sandra. anything that would go through a wide array of testing, and provide clues as to any AREA of the computer that doesnt test well.
If you supply the results of a benchmark "suite" then we can look at it , and attempt to figure out something?


If you overclock it again (just a start)
set the ram to 1:1 first,
turn off CE1 and stepping in the cpu section
lock a voltage for the cpu (you have to chose this wisely yourself, but say 1.3V to start)
raise your FSB from the 333 some , and test , test adjust test.
run prime small fft or interl burn test to see if it is stable.
must watch your temperatures and dont allow it to get crasy with temperature, especially when increasing the voltage from stock.