the strangest damn thing...

Super 7 board with a 400mhz k6-2 and 256 ram running windows 2k. The board supports UDMA/33 as does the drives. Thought I was doing the right thing by replacing the 40pin/40 wire IDE cables with 40 pin/80 wire cables. The 80 wires aren't required for udma/33 but I felt that the shielding could only help. The old and new cables are 18 inches; I know some boards have issues with the 24 inch and longer cables.

Anyway, windows was booting up ultra slow (like 7-8 minutes) and I checked via system info as well as wcpuid that my processor is running at 200mhz with a 50 mhz bus (at least I know the 4x multiplier is working). I thought that the bios flash I had done a few weeks ago might have something to do with it, so I reflashed to make sure it took (even though everything went fine the first time). Everything went well but still no change. I put the old IDE cables back in and even put the old bios back on. Still running at half speed.

Few more points to ponder:
-when the system boots up, the CPU is detected fine, K6-2 and all with the correct speed displayed during the POST
-when I accessed the directx diagnostic under system info, it also displays the correct speed although I can only assume it is getting it from the bios and its not "real time"
-real time cpu clock speed (from WCPUID program) displays the speed at 200mhz
-bus speed is set by jumpers on the board - those jumpers are set for 100mhz
-not likely a temperature thing; power supply fan is robust, I have an additional intake fan on the front of the case as well as an oversize heatsink and fan on the processor (you could store ice cream in the case)

As much as I would like to blame M$, I don't think it has anything to do with win2000 I am running. Just a coincidence that I was doing a fresh install of 2k and things went south. Has anyone ever encountered literal 50% cut in speed?

dare I say my motherboard is toast?

[This message has been edited by psabi (edited 01-29-2002).]

Check to see how many programs are loading at startup by doing a C-A-D on the Desktop. Loading a lot of programs is going to increase startup time more than than a 50% reduction in CPU and bus speeds(if that is in fact happening).
Another thing that will increase startup time is a failing hard drive.

It was a clean install, so there was little or nothing running at start up with the exception of the normal windows services running under win2k. The slow boot up was the symptom; I verified that even though the system is set up for a 100mhz bus with a 4x multiplier, any of the cpu tests registered the bus at 50mhz and the whole system at 200mhz. Maybe I damaged the board when I was replacing the cables but nothing I can tell...

UPDATE: I just deleted the win2000 install and threw on 98se just to see. The system booted normally, and using the cpu tests, it tested at 400mhz with a 100mhz bus. What could be happening in the windows 2000 install that is causing this?

BTW-using clean, up to date reference disks (AVG antivirus) I checked the system and no virus were detected.

Since I have win98se on the box now, i am trying to upgrade that version to windows 2000 now to see if it really does have something to do with windows 2000...

My motherboard doesn't even have a setting for a 50mhz bus...

I'd question the validity of that WCPUID prog you mentioned - is it win2k compatible? Also try installing Service Pack 2 for win2k, it might help, who knows http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Also in my experience in overclocking with fairly irregular clock speeds (eg. 1260MHz) The Bios will post 1260MHz but DirectX will read 1263MHz or something like that. I'm not sure it reads it from the BIOS post exacltly.