Strange result from overclocking

[DoubleDeuce]

Hello all! Hoping someone can shed some light on a strange problem that happened last night.

My specs are in my SIG but regardless:
Pentium D 805 OC'd to 3.6ghz (I've had it at 4ghz but don't keep it here)
Asus P5ND2-SLI
1GB Patriot DDR2 800mhz (5-5-5-12)
Twin XFX 7900GT's in SLI

Last night I restarted my computer while troubleshooting some minor hickups while playing Oblivion and after the restart my machine booted into what appeared to be a bios upgrade screen. I don't know if the bios was actually updated (I had read somewhere that there is an option with this board to download bios updates and install them for you) but after completing, my machine will no longer overclock. I have the QDR set in BIOS to 720mhz and the RAM clk set to 800mhz, exactly where they were prior to this happening.

What was that screen and what are my options? I've tried trottling the processor all the way to stock and then stepping the QDR up little by little, but it won't even OC to 2.8 ghz. It won't boot at all past 3.5 ghz, it locks up in the BIOS after recognizing the processor but prior to the memory, however the memory works fine at 800mhz when the CPU is at 2.66 ghz.

 

[DoubleDeuce]

I figured it out.

When the machine gets a bad overclock the bios flashes itself. Unfortunately when it did this it flashed to a bios version that didn't support my processor!

So when I flashed the bios with a fresh copy of the latest version it clocked right back up to 3.8 ghz!

 

[foshizzle]

Whoa, it flashed itself??? I've never heard of that before...interesting.

 

[hacker91]

I do believe i would have that feature turned off ASAP. To me thats gotta be the dumbest thing a mobo company has ever enabled. would be way too easy for malicious software to just wipe the BIOS out. leaving you a non operating board. Some boards have the BIOS soldered on so imagine what that means(new board) as only way to fix it.