Thanks to everyone for their help, the problem is resolved. The basic problem was an utter lack of L2 cache. It made sense that L2 cache was the problem but I could not figure out how to turn it on, because I had experimented with nearly every concievable setting in the BIOS that even smelled like it related to no avail. Finally, after looking for a good while for more specific diagnostic tools I finally just decided to update my bios despite the fact that nothing in the change-log mentioned the caches. Anyway, the external cache option suddenly changed from write-thru to write-back or vice-versa (I don't remember now) and that solved the problem. You would think FIC (MB manufacturer) would mention a defunct cache as a bios bug. Thanks again, I just thought I should mention it in case someone else is affected by this problem. -Conor McCutcheon _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
