P45XE weird startup...

[Apeman]

OK so I have P45XE board with latest 1.40 BIOS. Rest of the hardware:

430W Seasonic PSU
Intel Core2Duo E4500 [email protected]
- default voltage
- multiplier lowered from 11 to 10, FSB increased from 200 to 266
2x1GB Kingston ValueRam DDR2-667 (Dual Channel)
- FSB:DRAM ratio at lowest setting so 667MHz effective
- Timings 5-5-5-15 as CPU-Z specs show for 333MHz
NVIDIA GF8600GT 256MB PCI-E
Creative Labs X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI
WD Caviar Black 500GB SATA2
LG multiformat CD(-RW)/DVD(-+RW) recorder (IDE)
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy drive

The thing is that when I start my PC for the first time in the morning, switch power on from back switch of the PSU and then hit the power button in front panel, it makes this strange thing: It starts, then after second or two shuts down, starts again and begins to load Windows normally. This only seems to happen if my PC has been completely out of power and the PSU has been switched off.

I tried loading default BIOS settings and behaviour changed to this: after switching power on from the back of the PSU and starting up by pressing power button in front panel, it doesn't start immediately but after couple of seconds. But it doesnt shut down anymore and begins to load windows.

Is this kind of behaviour normal for this board when overclocked? It seems stable and no crashes or anything, I can play graphically intensive games for hours without problems. I just thought that it isn't healthy for HDD at least to do such a rapid start-shutdown cycling at startup.

Also sometimes it shuts down completely for couple of seconds when some cr4ppy app jams my Windows and I'll have to hit reset button. Usually it just reboots without shutting down in the middle of the process.

[bluetooth]

Maybe it is due to SAFE BOOT. Try turning it off.
Also check your system running your CPU in normal (non oC mode), if the same problem persists, something could be wrong somewhere.

[Apeman]

Like I said it doesn't do that boot-shutdown-boot-thing anymore when default BIOS settings are loaded and therefore no OC.

But if the problem doesn't go away in OC mode by switching that safe boot thing off, it has something to do with overclocked CPU that causes some kind of conflict in first startup try? Can it be overclocked too much even if it isn't unstable?

RAM should also be within specs, I tested with MemTester for windows that is supposed to be pretty reliable and it found no errors.

Oh and one more thing, when OCed Windows XP SP3 general info shows CPU frequency as 2.93GHz instead of 2.66GHz. Weird?

[bluetooth]

Would you try to increase the Vdimm . Alternatively, lower your o/c until it is more stable.

[Apeman]

Another weird thing is that if I adjust VCore manually it is much different (lower) in Windows than in BIOS. When I set VCore to 1.300 volts for example, cpu-z and asrock utility show cpu voltage as low as 1.208 volts! Default volt with auto setting seems to be 1.256 volts. I had to set something like 1.35V to get a bit higher 1.264V in Windows. And the voltage seems to change every time after reboot. Previously it was 1.264V and now 1.272V.

Eh? To me this could very well be PSU-related also. I guess even quality PSUs go bad sometimes... too bad I don't have spare PSU to test with. And I have all the Intel stuff disabled in BIOS so power saving features don't explain low Vcore.

[avkdm]

I have exactly the same problem. If anyone can help would be great.
Mine is Prime Stable 330x10 on an e5200.
One thing I have noticed is boy you have to give this chip some juice on this mobo to get it stable. I wonder if the voltage settings in the BIOS are accurate.

[Apeman]

Nothing much happening here I see...
But I guess this extra shutdown-restart-cycle is simply (annoying) feature of this P45-chipset, and occurs only if I overclock anything even a tiny bit.

[bluetooth]

Does it happen if you don't oc at all

[Apeman]

No, if I set everything to stock this doesn't happen.

[Mau1wurf1977]

I know why this is...

If you kill the power, the BIOS assumes you had technical issues and first boot it loads default settings so you can go into BIOS and change things.

Then it reboots and loads your last OC settings.

Nothing you can do apart from not turning off PSU at the back...