Area 51 over clock error when booting

Question

Hi I have an Area 51 with a Core i7 920. It is using the A03 BIOS from 2009. It has run fine until yesterday when I tried the Level One overClocking that is in the BIOS in the voltage settings. After I did that it booted to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and shortly after I got a blue screen with the shutdown to prevent damage warning. After I tried to reboot I keep going to a screen in the Alienware BIOS that says it had a over clock error and is going back to it's original settings.ior After that it goes back to the BIOS area. I went back to the section where I did the over clock and set it to defaults. I then save the setting and try to reboot. When it is rebooting I get four beeps and then it restarts itself. It will do this a few times then go to the normal BIOS splash screen then to the over clocking error screen in the BIOS from before. I have checked the BIOS setting repeatedly as well as trying to g defaults on all and the same thing happens. I went as far as pulling one of my video cards out and yanking the CMOS battery out. That had an effect where the BIOS told me that there was an error and did I want to use the default. I hit yes and it booted into windows. I then tried to restart the system only to find that it began doing everything it had been prior to pulling the CMOS battery. After running through the steps again I tried to use the over clocking utility again and it booted through to windows and once again it blue screened with the same error and back to the four beeps and restarts and the message that it is going back to defaults which it then brings me baack to the BIOS over and over again. It just keeps looping, I no don't care about over clocking anymore I am totally gun shy with that now, I just want it to run! Please help me!!

Rich Dewees · Answer

Just a thought....Make sure you have the proper setting to boot (RAID/non RAID) in the BIOS....Could have changed when it reverted your settings....

csf1701 · Answer

Thank you for the suggestion, I checked in the BIOS and couldn't find a RAID setting anywhere. I did do the thing with pulling the CMOS battery and got it to boot to windows again, I then checked and found a new BIOS version which I installed. Still having the same issue when booting though.

csf1701 · Answer

I am now able to hit F1 when the screen comes up about going back to defaults after unsucessful over-clocking, but now I am getting hardware bluescreens in windows.  Am I totally screwed now?!

ameetw · Answer

I think Rich Dewees is correct. The RAID/ACHI setting is the most likely problem. Are you using RAID in your system? How many HDD do you have? When I over clocked mine, i had no problem, but i figured i won't be using the extra clock cycles so i reset mine to default. The RAID/ACHI was also reset. Since I did not want to have that problem again, i migrated my OS to a single SSD. So which ever setting i choose, no problem.

morblore · Answer

I am now able to hit F1 when the screen comes up about going back to defaults after unsucessful over-clocking, but now I am getting hardware bluescreens in windows. Am I totally screwed now?!

When you go back to default page settings in the BIOS it not only resets the BIOS page you are looking at but all the BIOS pages. When you pulled the CMOS battery it also reset the system time/date.

You need to go page by page in the BIOS and set them all back to what they need to be.

morblore · Answer

You need to confirm all the settings in the BIOS are right. If it worked fine untill you played with it then the issue is going to be a BIOS setting.  Only other thing I can think of is maybe windows got corrupted with all the crashing.

csf1701 · Answer

I am not using RAID at all, but I have a total of 5 hard drives in it.  It does boot off the C drive, but then it bluescreens after a little while.  Could the RAID setting cause a Bluesreen in windows?

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