Long story short... I let a friend borrow my PC last week. He said he updated the BIOS driver and a few other things. NOw that I have it back, it doesnt seem to run as fast or efficiantly as it used to. Sometimes the #### thing just crashes and resets without any warning. I have tried contacting the person that did the "work" but he wont return my calls. Are the settings below optimal for my motherboard?General specs:AMD Athlon XP 2700+, 2.15GHz, 1.5GB RAMMotherboard:ASUS A7V8X-XCPU: Socket A for AMD Barton/Thoroughbred/ Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron 2.25+ GHz CPUChipset: Northbridge- VIA KT400 Southbridge- VIA VT8235Front side Bus: 200/266/333IDE: 2 X UltraDMA 133/100/66When I run the BIOS setup utility, under "ADVANCED" the settings are:CPU Speed: 2167 (other options are MANUAL, 1300, 1733, and 2600)CPU Frequency Multiple: 13.0X (many other options are available)CPU External Frequency: 166/33 (Many other options are available)Memory Frequency: AUTO ( other option is 333)When I press F5 to load the default settings, nothing changes... even if I change a value, then press F5, it doesnt change. Are the settings above optimal for my PC? Thanks in advance.

Can you reset the BIOS? There's a small jumper on most motherboards that allows you to reset BIOS, if you think that this is where the problem lies. Chances are though, that other things were "tweakd" as well, maybe in the OS, etc. Do you recall what BIOS rev you had before, so that you culd possibly restore the BIOS- I have never gone backwards in BIOS revisions but can't imagine why it wouldn't work.I never even let people use my computer, let alone "work" on it. Did you build it yourself, or is this a friend that has more "technical knowledge"? If you don't understand the BIOS workings on your PC, the you might be better leaving it alone, unless someone here has some very specific instructions for you (I don't know enough to give them to you). Bruce.PS. re-read your question. If you do change BIOS settings, you do have to save them- and you are most likely being prompted for this on exiting the BIOS. I'm unsure as to what your settings mean for your PC, I don't know that CPU and/or motherboard / memory. There are some very excellent people here that know more about systems than you can imagine, so maybe one of those will have some input. Good luck, Bruce.

Good morning guys. You mention reseting with a jumper. This applys to the CMOS reset only, not the bios. If this person updated your bios, he did it by flashing it. In essence the small chip on your MB gets erased and reprogramed. This in itself is very dangerous, as if a mistake is made the Motherboard is a paperweight. Being the computer boots up indicates the bios chip is ok. The bios chip could be replaced but would cost almost as much as the Board itself. The other settings in relation to memory settings, IRQ assignments, AGP settings etc... are done via CMOS. I would hope this person who made these changes, can explain what was done, so the computer can be restored back to where it worked ok. I hope this helped.

Hm this is gonna be hard if you don't know what the guy had changed. But I think it is well possible that your problems are in the OS rather than in the BIOS. The values you posted seem about right and secure. What about the RAM timings? I would also check on the mainboard vendor's website which BIOS is the latest one for your board and compare. What I would do first is to make a system restore if you have a restore point from before you gave the guy your PC. This won't change the BIOS of course but who knows what these "other changes" might have been.Alex

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Hi, Chad.Chances are that you are better off with the new BIOS, but typically when you change the BIOS all the Settings within the CMOS get reset. That means that you have to go back and set them to what you had before, like the Front bus, CPU clock, RAM / Memory, Video Sideband AGP speed AA, AF etc., need to be set again. You will likely get better performance, don