I've experienced a strange phenomenon with my Dell PC. Shut PC down,
disconnected peripherals, opened case, cleaned out with compressed air, made
sure connectors, cards and memory was seated properly, closed case, hooked
up peripherals and promptly went to a blank prompt screen with blinking
cursor in upper left corner of monitor on next boot. I had to manually shut
down PC,  again went to reboot and got the error message on screen (with
rudimentary BIOS info at top) that "your system failed to boot properly last
time it was started. Contact support for problems, with the error code
[Ithr] as where the system failed to initilize. I went online with my backup
PC and googled to a couple of Dell support forums that explained that a USB
device probably caused failure (although the post referred to a USB flash
device connected to PC on booting). I unplugged system from the power supply
for about an hour and rebooted with no USB devices attached (mouse
included). System fired up slowly (almost did not make it through POST
routine), Windows eventually loaded and I found myself in Hyperspace. Been
that way for two days now. I thought maybe SiSoft (2005 Lite) was
incorrectly reporting FSB and processor speed settings, so I went to PC
PitStop, ran the full test series and I now have an OC'd P4 530 operating at
4.38Ghz. On air! Doesn't seem to be running hot even with the Folding@Home
program that I run. (PC stays on most days 24hrs) I have no clue as to how
the FSB went from 4X200 to 4X292 (effectively 1168Mhz from 800Mhz)
The PC specs are as follows:
Dell 8400 P4 530 LGA 775
Intel 925X mobo
512Mb PC 3200 DDR2
80+200 SATA HDD's
WinXP Pro

USB peripherals include:
Canon scanner
HP printer
Optical mouse
ATI external TV capture card

Does anyone have an idea how the FSB came unglued?

Chris Ryan
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