CPU Load, Where does it come from..Where did mine go

I was cruising along at a stable 260X9.5 with my 3400 on a LP250 UT when I started to read about the 1/2 multi. issues and the AMD 64's. I changed to a 10x and started to push it with clock-gen, and crashed at 261 with a ton of volts.. (H20 cooled).
I backed down to 10X250 1.7v 37C and primed overnight.
It's runnung stable, but I lost the CPU usage info in MBM and in the OSD when using FFdshow. In MBM it shows the CPU speed in the usage block and 0 in the mgz ( running at) block. CPUZ correctly identifies the cpu at 2500, and durring boot the bios shows correctly as a 3400. This happend on an EPOX board, and flashing the bios didn't help, but used that board on a different system, and on a fresh load of XP the info was back..
Can anyone tell me where these programs get the info from, what I broke, or how to fix it without F-disking..??
Thanks

Thank god all you guys taught me the right way to O/C. Step 1.. (I do it without even thinking now before I change anything) Create a restore point.... The problem is remembering to use it !!!!!!!!!! Lucky for me it's my memmory to be the first to go... I restored and it's working again...