Protection Error with AMD K6-3 CPU

Now I know what a lot of you are thinking, I need the Microsoft Patch for Windows 95, for AMD CPU's faster than 350, but, this PC is running Windows 98SE. The system config is as follows: AMD K6-3 450 CPU, Asus P5A-B motherboard, 64MB PC100 DIMM, PCI Graphics card, Sound Blaster 16 Soundcard/28.8 modem combo card, 10GB Seagate HD, Floppy and 48x CDROM, and of course Win98 SE. While setting up the PC last week, I had none of these errors after doing multiple re-boots, but after the client has had the PC back over the weekend, all of sudden things have gone wrong (Funny that). At first I thought that perhaps Norton's anti-virus was the culprit, but after remvoing that, it booted fine, then started getting faults again. If I jumper the PC down to something like 300mhz, it boots fine, if I jumper it to 400mhz, it screws up again. Suggestions anyone?

Sounds like it may have burnt cache. try a different CPU.

It could even be a 'relabeled' CPU. Lots of unscrupulous venders out there.

Also be sure you are running latest bios - ver. 1010 http://www.asus.com.tw/products/moth...s_socket7.html

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Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted

Paint your old laptop!

Thanks for the quick replies, but it's still a no go. I tried a different CPU, same problem, and also updated the BIOS (Was version 1008) to the latest version 1010. I was sorta expecting the BIOS update to fix the CPU recognition problem though which it didnt. The AMD K6-3 450 gets detected as a "-MMX 450mhz Processor. Another thing that might be worth mentioning is the BIOS update I got (1010) according to the Asus site was dated 5/31/00 but after updating the machine and re-booting, the date was 24/2/00. Anyone have any more ideas other than re-installing Windows?

Something else I also forgot to mention that could be cause for some weird problems like this .... Voltage. Can someone please tell me what the correct voltage AMD K6-3 CPU's are meant to run at? According to the chip itself, core voltage is 2.0v, but according to the Asus Motherboard book, it is 2.4v? Originally we had been setting these to run at 2.0v as specified on the chip, but found the machines would fail to boot. At 2.1v they booted and ran fine, although I was concerned about the CPU temp at this voltage (We have done about 6 of these upgrades, all using 2.1v, but have noticed the CPU temps reported by the BIOS to be in excess of 67 degrees celsius, about twice as hot as the motherboard temp). If we run them at 2.4 volts as suggested in the Motherboard manual, we see the temps rise above 75 degrees and the PC has on occasion fallen over. The really weird thing is though, at these temps the heatsink attached to the CPU is cold. If the chip is running at 67 degrees I would imagine the heatsink to be pretty close to that also. This has been the case for the past 6 of these PC's we have built, co-incidence or could they be a bad batch of boards?