Underclocking. Trying To Find A Way.

Hey, how's it going guys?

I've heard that if your PC is overclocked, it crashes. That's what's happening on mine for the last 3 years, and... I've been lazy about it. My PC is pretty much clean. No viruses or anything I can think of to make it crash or freeze. It happens right after I upgraded from ME to XP. One thing I thought of the problem could be that my PC isn't compatible with XP, but I've heard many people upgrade from ME to XP with no problem, and they brought their computer the same time as I did. My PC now runs at 701 mHz, and I can get the to BIOs screen, but there isn't an option to configure it. I tried opening the PC to look for the jumpers, but it's not there, or I'm just not looking hard enough. I have a Compaq.

Am I doing something wrong? or I just can't make changes to it, like you can't on a few computers? Thanks a lot.

Could you tell us more about your pc ie. what speed it is supposed to be running at, how much ram so on so forth

Windows XP - Version 2002
AMD Duron Processor
701 mHz. (Nothing's changed since I bought the computer with Windows ME)
576 MB RAM




I'll post more up later.
One thing I will state, is that my PC seems to freeze when the computer isn't using a lot of RAM. For instance, it doesn't freeze often when I'm playing game full screen, but if I'm surfing the net, and definatly leaving the computer alone, it'll freeze. Don't know why, but that might clear up a few things.

If you haven't overclocked it, then I don't think you'll gain reliability from underclocking it...The only case that I heard where underclocking seemed to be the solution is someone who wanted to go without any cooling. Unless your CPU is overheating...but that wouldn't make sense if it's crashing while idle.

Ah, yeah, you have a point. I just went to use the restroom; came back , and it crashed. It's always like this.

It crashes when it's idle or in little use, but won't crash so much if it's in a lot of use. Weird.

I think the best thing to do would be to format. :P No seriously, upgrading from an OS to Windows XP is only recommended by Microsoft, because most of the time it brings up a ton of problems.

Other than that, I suggest you install all appropriate drivers, not only let the default windows xp drivers. Go on your PC part manufacturer website, and get the updated optimized drivers.
Do that for and in order:
Your motherboard chipset
Your video card
Your sound card

Any other device you could think.
Then do a spyware and virus scan while in safe mode.
Scan with your prefered application, or my favorites:
AVG Antivirus
Ad-Aware 6
Spybot Search and Destroy
Microsoft Anti-spyware
Ewido Security Suite

This should clean the junk if there's any.
Also a random question like that, does your computer freeze with a black screen or with what you were doing? Because if it freeze with a black screen it might be a problem with the standby mode. Your computer ACPI (which is just power management) might be fucked up for some reason, it happens alot on older motherboards.

It just freezes with everything in place.

It also says

"Problem
Current AGP speed is lower than maximum supported. This may cause performance penalty."


In the info I'm getting from. Any ideas what that might mean?

You apparently changed something in your bios. I suggest going in there and resetting the defaults unless you know what every option means.

That, or your video card is old. :lol
But honestly i never saw that error myself so i can't be sure.

Oh crap, I didn't mean that it says that when it freezes. It says that under the info for my motherboard chipset informations.

When it freezes, it just freezes everything in place. No message or anything. Haha, sorry for the confusion.

One thing that could be a problem is if your cpu fan and heatsink is all gummed up with dirt, hair, dwarves, etc. You might want to pop the lid on your case just to check.

Also feel the back of the power supply for any air flow while the system is running. It should be warmish, and certainly not hot to the touch.

With any fans, make sure they actually spin while the computer is powered. If there's no airflow, that should be taken care of quickly.

So if I understand correctly, you upgraded your ME install to XP? If this is the case, I'm wondering how much of the ridiculously unstable ME was used in the process? A clean XP install would be preferred, without the upgrade from a 9x o/s, particularly from ME.