Hey all, I had a power outage at my house about a month ago while browsing the net, and my computer hasn't worked the same since. For some reason, after it's on for awhile, it will just freeze up and black out. No BSOD, just frozen and down. Often, it happens when I can hear my computer starting to kick in a bit to run a little harder, although it's usually not a very huge amount of work that it's doing, just a simple thing like playing a flash game or something. If I use internet explorer, it also tends to make it crash faster then if I'm using firefox. A few times when it's happened, I restart my computer, and on the BIOS check screen, I'm getting a message that says "Overclocking Failed!". I'm pretty sure I haven't been trying to overclock my computer, so I don't know why this is happening. Also, I was just checking the system properties, and it's listing as "Pentium(R)4 CPU 3.00GHz 3.01 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM" Is my computer somehow overclocking itself now? and how can I stop it manually? All help is appreciated.

Have you tried to reset the cmos jumper and clear the setting back to it's defualt settings?

No, I haven't tried resetting the cmos jumper yet.. I was hoping I could fix it without opening up my tower, but that's probably a good idea. How was it that you reset the jumper again? I did it a few years ago, but only once. You just touch a screwdriver to the tip when the power's off, right?

It's very common for the CPU frequency to run slightly higher than default...for instance, 200MHz running at say, 200.4MHz. Regardless, a 10MHz overclock isn't gonna cause a system to lock up. "You just touch a screwdriver to the tip when the power's off, right?" No, you unplug the power cord, then use the ClearCMOS jumper. Just move it from it's normal position to the clear position, wait a few seconds, then move it back to it's normal position again.

Thanks a bunch for the help! I just now reset the CMOS, and it seems to be running fine. If I have any other problems, I'll be right back here. =)