7 replies to this topic

[amajamar]

I just completed my first build. It consists of the following: Asus P8Z68-V Pro, I7 2600K, 8GB Corsair Vengence, XFX HD6790, WD Caviar Black 500GB, PC Power & Cooling Silencer 760 Watt, Cooler Master Hyper 212+, in a Diablotek EVO case. I think it came out pretty nice, and with the exception of the PSU not being modular and having a lot of unused cables, it is pretty neatly wired, as well!

Anyway, to my point, I am already running stably at the default OC (4430Ghz) and I have already had a unbootable overclocking mess with having to use "last known good configuration" to recover, so I am a little hesitant to push my luck. Since I am running a migrated WIN XP Pro install that I can't trash or I'm out of business, I need a safe alternative to use to determine my max stable overclock settings, before using it with my standard OS.

Can I use UBCD4WIN as a reliable OS to determine if my OC settings will cause an unbootable XP start, or should I create a fresh install of XP on another hard drive to take my chances with? I have a spare XP license to install, and if it gets corrupted I can just reinstall.

Just looking for advice about what you guys do to prevent from trashing your main boot install when you are playing around with OC settings.

Thanks in advance!

[Tjj226_Angel]

I just completed my first build. It consists of the following: Asus P8Z68-V Pro, I7 2600K, 8GB Corsair Vengence, XFX HD6790, WD Caviar Black 500GB, PC Power & Cooling Silencer 760 Watt, Cooler Master Hyper 212+, in a Diablotek EVO case. I think it came out pretty nice, and with the exception of the PSU not being modular and having a lot of unused cables, it is pretty neatly wired, as well!

Anyway, to my point, I am already running stably at the default OC (4430Ghz) and I have already had a unbootable overclocking mess with having to use "last known good configuration" to recover, so I am a little hesitant to push my luck. Since I am running a migrated WIN XP Pro install that I can't trash or I'm out of business, I need a safe alternative to use to determine my max stable overclock settings, before using it with my standard OS.

Can I use UBCD4WIN as a reliable OS to determine if my OC settings will cause an unbootable XP start, or should I create a fresh install of XP on another hard drive to take my chances with? I have a spare XP license to install, and if it gets corrupted I can just reinstall.

Just looking for advice about what you guys do to prevent from trashing your main boot install when you are playing around with OC settings.

Thanks in advance!

I am not understanding, your problem. Let me get this straight, so you have an overclock on your CPU and you tried to boot into windows, but it failed. If that is the case, you DON"T have a stable overclock and you need to post your problem under the overclocking section to get better help. If it is just an instability problem, you just need to put more volts into your CPU.

If it is something totally different, then you could always get a 16gb flash drive and put a bootable version of linux on it. You can boot from the flash drive and then install prime 95 to test your CPU, but honestly it sounds like you have either an unstable overclock, an unstable OS, or an unstable hard drive.

If nothing else you could always format the hard drive and put Windows 7 on it. You can download the free trial (google win 7 free trial) to see if you like it or not and then you could purchase a license key for it over the phone (or use a key generator )

[Black64]

Why use a different OS? If it doesn't work with windows then it doesn't work. And you won't trash your OS with OCing. To reset your setting just remove the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS settings.

OCing won't wipe your HDD and it won't mess up your windows, it can however fry your CPU and/or mobo which that in turn can cause your PC not to boot.

[amajamar]

To clarify. I am stable now, but I changed some settings and had a no boot situation which required XP to go into "last known good ", so I went back to the bios selected OC.

I don't want to corrupt my XP install because of failed boot attempts, so I am looking for safe alternatives. I can run prime 95 from UBCD, however, would you consider that a proper test of the OC settings for booting into xp proper?

Sorry if I'm not being clear in describing my situation, but I'm a noob with this stuff and don’t want to crash my working XP install.

[vborets]

You can install another copy of OS on another partition (if you have space) and using boot menu select necessary OS (for work or for test)

[Kamikaze_Badger]

I haven't heard of overclocking corrupting an OS, but I'm far from a guru there. If you're really that paranoid, you should back up all of the data you need for business, and then no worries. If you're too paranoid to start Windows, reset your BIOS to factory settings and you won't have any issues.

If your PC is so important that you don't want to risk that, you shouldn't be overclocking it much, if it all.

[bldegle2]

clone your drive ASAP, yes, you can fubar an XP install with OCing and with all your precious data and whatnot you shouldn't be taking chances, I have had 'explosions' that rendered my HD to RAW format, just sayin'...

then play, never OC with mission critical 'I can't lose this install/setup/loads of data"....back it up, then play hard until you get your rig tight...

good luck...

laterzzzzz....

Edited by bldegle2, 27 December 2011 - 04:38 AM.

[alishathomaz]

I would recommend you to fresh windows XP, if you can't format your windows then try to install it again on another partition. You don't need to format your existing windows. You will have two operating systems. Hope your problem is resolved