Re: Help with bios on MSI P35 Neo2

jerry wrote:
I have put this computer together last week and had installed XP pro
and a bunch of other stuff. It had been working pretty well and I was
testing it and working out any bugs. I never did any overclocking. I
put on a thermaltake heatsink/fan and Prime 95 after 20 min was
running 52C.

I have the core2 quad Q660 cpu.

Yesterday I went out for the day and left it running basically in idle
to see how it would work for an extended period. When I came home a
message was on the screen that the overclocking had failed and that I
needed to adjust the bios settings. Since I had not overclocked it I
did not know why that happened.

Now when I try to boot it runs the bootup stuff and says how do I want
to start windows; I have tried normally, last best setting, and fail-
safe. Then it seems to start windows, the win logo never comes up, and
reboots.

I can boot the windows install cd. It recognizes the previous install
and let me do a recovery without problem, until it tries to boot into
windows. It reboots instead.

In the bios the H/W monitor under pchealth status shows CPU VCORE
1.288 to 1.296.

In the Cell Menu D.O.T is disabled and also Intel EIST. the FSB=266
cpuratio=9. Here in red letters stating that this setting is unstable
it says the CPU voltage is 1.3125V.

I have pressed the bios reset button on the mb.

I cannot figure out how to adjust the cpu voltage back to normal
range.

OR since I can do a recovery of XP pro is it a problem with the hard
drive, and I should just reformat and reinstall and see if there is
any problem? Of course I don't see how that would return the cpu
voltage to normal.

Appreciate any help.

Jerry

It sounds like the computer crashed while you left it running.

The manual is pretty bad looking. I downloaded it, and it shows
voltages listed in two places. You would expect the "PC Health"
part to be displaying read-only voltage values, and these
values would be coming from the readings of the hardware monitor.

There is also the Cell Menu, and it has voltages shown as well.
The Vcore shows "+0.0" in the manual, implying a setting at
this point, would be a "delta" to the nominal Vcore. So if
the nominal Vcore was 1.3125V and you added 50mV via that
menu item, the new Vcore would be 1.3625V. And then that
new value should be reflected in the PC Health display
later after the next POST. (The measured value is never
exactly equal to the VID Vcore setting, and on some boards,
the voltage "pops up" a little bit, under light load. So
a setting of 1.3125 + 0.050 = 1.3625V, might be measured
at around 1.41V in the PC Health.)

It sounds like perhaps D.O.T. needs to be disabled, and
then perhaps more of the other settings would revert to
manual control.

I usually waste 1/2 an hour, fiddling with settings, to get
as many of them as possible, into a manual mode. I hate
automated overclocking, as some BIOS apply vicious overvolting
to motherboard components when in auto modes. Sometimes the
only warning this is happening, might be excessively hot
chipset heatsinks.

I don't expect the manual is telling you that there are no
adjustments at all. So you're going to have to try a
few different values for things in the Cell Menu, and see if
you can shake it loose. Restoring the BIOS to default settings,
or even using the clear CMOS jumper, would be other options,
if you aren't making any progress. Before clearing the
CMOS, remember to unplug the computer. That is for safety, as
in the past there have been motherboards, where a part on the
board gets burned if you leave the power on and use the clear
CMOS jumper. There is no reason for a problem with an Intel
chipset, but old (design) habits die hard in the motherboard
industry, so better safe than sorry.

Similarly, if adding or removing RAM or add-in cards like the
video card, you should also ensure all power is absent from the
computer. Unplugging is a quick way to visually guarantee that
no power is present, and then the computer is safe to play with.

Paul
.