[Techtalk] Nforce A7N8X motherboard forgets clock multiplier on reboot

[Mary]

Hey everyone,

I've got an NVidia nforce A7N8X motherboard. I know now that they're not
exactly famous for their Linux compatibility, but I don't want to get a
new motherboard for obvious reasons unless this one is unrepairable.

The Linux machine running on it crashes every few days: or rather it
hangs needing a reboot. I'm not sure whether this is the motherboard or
not, and neither the consoles after the hang, nor /var/log/syslog,
reveal anything out of the ordinary or note the hang itself. (My
hardware-fu is not hugely wonderful, and the only thing I've ever seen
cause this is bad RAM. But I doubt that's the only possible
explanation.)

However, the real problem is that when this hang occurs, the BIOS
forgets the clock multiplier: after the memory check part of startup
(which completes without error although it reduces the memory speed to
100 MHz) it immediately gives an error message about not knowing the CPU
speed. Entering the BIOS and exiting it without any changes fixes the
problem as does setting the multiplier to 11x by hand.

We have not been overclocking it, or otherwise giving it settings that
might damage it. I didn't build the machine though.

Anyone got any clues? I don't like having to drag a monitor and keyboard
over to it every time it crashes in order to get it to actually boot.

-Mary