[Techtalk] Nforce A7N8X motherboard forgets clock multiplier on reboot

[Tiera]

Hi Mary!

Mary wrote:

>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.)
>
>  
>
This happened to me on my old computer. A couple of times a week it 
would just hang without reason. I checked all the logs and could never 
find anything.

>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.
>
>  
>
This also happened alot on my old computer. I would start it and it 
would stop and complain about not knowing the CPU speed. Sometimes it 
took me four or five restarts and resavings of settings before it would 
boot. This wasn't an Nforce motherboard, but an Epox. Eventually I got 
tired of the behaviour and switched computer with my boyfriend. He 
bought a new motherboard (and CPU and memory). When he started to 
install the OS on that computer it started behaving weird again. Not 
exactly the same errors I had had previously, but it would hang and he 
never managed to completly install the OS and it would do all sorts of 
strange things. After a lot of troubleshooting he switched the power 
supply to another one and it worked! We always thought the problem with 
my computer was the motherboard, but apparently there was something 
wrong with the power supply. So perhaps you can try and exchange the 
power supply and see if that makes any difference? You never know...

/Tiera