"Warning! CPU has been changed!"

[Brangwen]

Fellow Members:

Like most mornings, on way to dining room to eat breakfast before getting ready for work I went into den and powered on computer (Hot-Keyed), heard the box fire up and headed for my cereal.

I returned to my den 20 minutes later. First boot screen is still up with message:

"Warning! CPU has been changed. Press Del to Enter CMOS and Save settings before exiting."

I went through Award BIOS/CMOS screens ... nothing. CPU temp was 35C, nothing unusual, settings looked same. I exited (ESC) and hit F1 to Continue. Win2000Pro launched through, no problems at all, then I came to TechIMO and typed this ...

IWill XP333-R
XP 1900+
1 GB Crucial PC2700 CL 2.5
Maxtor 40GB FastDrive (ATA133)
Plextor CDRW
Parhelia Graphics - 2 Samsung SynMaster monitors
Win2KPro
Linksys NIC - Router - other box
Typical peripherals . . .
eAnthology Antivirus self-updating automated virus scanning

Everything works: never had this happen before.

Any ideas?

Brangwen

[Brangwen]

Fellow Members:

After beginning thread, I rebooted: same message. I noticed that message actually stated "Enter Smart Settings, Save Changes, Exit."

I did so, enabled "Spread Spectrum " (something like that), rebooted and this time it booted through. I never noticed "Spread Spectrum" (something like that ... ) before ...

Any ideas?

Thx.

Brangwen

[jmichna]

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=7&var1=18
From Adrian's Rojak Pot BIOS Optimization Guide":
"FSB Spread Spectrum

Common Options : 0.5%, 1.0%, Disabled

Quick Review

This BIOS feature allows you to reduce the EMI of the front side bus (known alternately as the FSB or processor bus) by modulating the signals it generates so that the spikes are reduced to flatter curves. It achieves this by varying the frequency slightly so that the signal does not use any particular frequency for more than a moment.

The BIOS usually offers two levels of modulation - 0.5% or 1.0%. The greater the modulation, the greater the reduction of EMI. Therefore, if you need to significantly reduce the front side bus' EMI, a modulation of 1.0% is recommended.

In most conditions, frequency modulation via this feature should not cause any problems. However, system stability may be compromised if you are overclocking the front side bus. Of course, this depends on the amount of modulation, the extent of overclocking and other factors like temperature, etc. As such, the problem may not readily manifest itself immediately.

Therefore, it is recommended that you disable this feature if you are overclocking the front side bus. The risk of crashing your system is not worth the reduction in EMI. Of course, if EMI reduction is important to you, enable this feature by all means. But you should reduce the clock speed a little to provide a margin of safety.

If you are not overclocking, the decision to enable or disable this feature is really up to you. But unless you have EMI problems or sensitive data that must be safeguarded from electronic eavesdropping, it is best to disable this feature to remove the possibility of stability issues."

[Brangwen]

jmichna:

Thanks for the info ... though w/o looking it up, I haven't the slightest idea what EMI is.

In any event, I Enabled that feature (FSB Spread Spectrum) when quite out-of-the-blue the symptoms appeared as described in my first post ("CPU has changed").

This resolved my problem. I may have have that feature Enabled and "something" disabled it (see Post Script). I was not overclocking, and my FSB and vcore were set to stock (or default/auto) values. Finally the CPU temp was sub 40C.

Who knows? One of those flukes, I guess.

Thx.

Brangwen

PS: My wife suggested it may have been a result of solar activity. She read an article where computers were being affected by such activity around that time.

[paul9]

emi is electromagnetic interference about the same as rfi radio frequency interference. if you have noise on your tv radio, cordless phone, baby monitors, etc, then try this setting to on. otherwise don't bother. try changeing the mobo battery if the other problem happens again. as for smart settings, to me, smart in the bios brings up hard drive status to mind but on your mobo it may just be auto settings for the bios features. and my comp went flaky the other day, which i suspect the massive solar flare for. that is an example of emi, in fact.

[Brangwen]

paul9

Interesting Re: EMI ---> Solar flare.

Smart Settings in my Award BIOS is a screen for setting:

> FSB
> CPU voltage increase
> CPU Throttle feature
> and others that I cannot include w/o going "there" to refresh my memory!

Thx.

Brangwen

[John Prophet]

The speard spectrum junk is basically not even a needed feature as far as use of the machine....from my understanding it is for the inspection of the motherboards so that they are within certain standards...in other words they can only have a certain amount of EMI..so the spread spectrum is there for that purpose.

I have never enabled it at all..it does nothing of any use for an end user.

JP

[Brangwen]

John:

You may be correct . . . May be not. I "Disabled" the Spectrum" feature before I posted just now to give better info. For whatever reason -- when my boot through stopped with "Your CPU has changed!" and everything looked right (same) in BIOS, "Enabling" the "Spectrum" feature fixed my problem. Now? Now my computer boots through with feature disabled. Who knows? I do know that enabling that feature fixed my computer when it needed fixing. I am not qualified to state "it does nothing of any use for an end user."

Brangwen

[John Prophet]

I am

[John Prophet]

j/k, lol. I couldnt resist that one.

Well, if you look it up on 50 sites..tell me what they say the use of it is, lol.

its just for them to be able to pass inspection with the board...they can only have so much emi etc.

Of course, they should really hype it up like it does something great..then charge more!

I would think in your case it was just more of a coincidence if it made any difference.

Look it up on the manufacturers various sites...I doubt they give any good use for it, lol.

Peace, JP