My bios keeps changing (please help)

[mrshovelhands]

Evening everyone.

I bought my PC back in May of this year and have a little problem with it, so I would be mighty appreciative to get to get some good advice from people who know more than I do about these things (just about everyone).

Now and again (every couple of weeks) when I start up, I get nothing on the screen except the "No Signal" sign. So naturally I restart. BUT, when I do, the settings change from AMD Athlon 2600 to AMD Athlon 1250. I took it back to the shop and showed the guy there a couple of months ago, and he showed me how to set it back to an AMD Athlon 2600. But this keeps happening. When I told him it was still happening, he suggested the battery might need changing (haven't tried this yet), but the PC is only 6 months old, so I will try it but don't hold out much hope.

This was bad enough, BUT 2 weeks ago, it did the same thing to me, but this time, it changed to an AMD DURON and some odd figures (1147 or something like that). After tearing out what little hair I've got, I tried changing it back the way the guy in the shop showed me, but it stayed as a Duron. Three days later, it changed itself back to an Athlon. I am so confused.

Can anyone give me some advice on this please, as I am really starting to get frustrated.

One more question, when I change the BIOS settings to auto change themselves to the optimum settings for performance, they always setup at AMD Athlon 2000. Does this mean that my system is being overclocked at 2600? When the thing changes to a 1250 on its own, I go into the settings in the BIOS and change the settings manually to 166. Should I be doing this or should I use AMD Athlon 2000 as it's proper setting?

System Details...

AMD Athlon 2600 (allegedly)
512 Ram
MotherBoard (Manufaturer ECS) M848A REV:2.1
BIOS American Megatrends version 07.00T
O/S Windows XP Home edition
C drive is the usual read only drive which uses CDs and DVDs
D drive is a DVD writer (which I can't figure out how to use - told you I was dumb)

Many thanks for your time folks

[PrntRhd]

Start with the cheapest and easiest first. Replace the battery and see if it fixes it.
:)

[mrshovelhands]

Start with the cheapest and easiest first. Replace the battery and see if it fixes it.
:)

Sounds like good logic. I'll do that tomorrow. The only trouble for me, is that I'll probably have to wait a few weeks to see if it was that, as it only happens (usually) every couple of weeks. Regarding the cost, it's not a problem if it turns out to be any of the hardware. Even if it's the BIOS chip or the motherboard, the machine is only 6 months old, so it's still covered by the guarantee.

Cheers for the advice PrntRhd. :)

[ziba-june]

Hi,

Does everything in your CMOS changes or just your CPU settings? If the battery is bad, it would aslo effect your computer's clock. I say try your MB manufacturer website to see if there is any BIOS upgrade that would deal with your problem.

[mrshovelhands]

Hi,

Does everything in your CMOS changes or just your CPU settings? If the battery is bad, it would aslo effect your computer's clock. I say try your MB manufacturer website to see if there is any BIOS upgrade that would deal with your problem.

Hi,

the answer is that other things do change. The other things that change are things like the boot up order, but the clock doesn't seem to be affected.

I have just been over to the shop for the bloke there to put a new battery in for me. I am a bit worried, as I just switched it on and the first message I got while it was booting up was "CMOS Battery Low". Should this happen when you put in a new battery? The shop is closed now so I can't check with them if this is normal, but I am a bit concerned that he may have just stuck in an old battery he had laying around into my machine.

I've taken your advice reegarding contacting the MB manufacturer. I sent them the details on one of their online forms. I had an auto response saying how busy they are and that they will try to get back to me when possible, but nothing since.

Many Thanks

Graham