AK77-600GN - HALT Command Detect

I have recently been having lockups on my PC ...
AK77-600GN
AMD Athlon XP 2600 Barton
512M DDR400
MX4000 AGPx8 128-DVI

.... the machine would lockup anywhere between 10 minutes and 3 days
from power up. If I ran a Virus check it would almost always lock up
after 10-30 minutes of the scan.

I changed loads of settings without success (and then set them back).
Recently I changed two BIOS settings and the machine has been running
for a week now.
I changed the clock multiplier from 166 (x11.5 = 1.9GHz) to the minimum
of 161 (now 1.85GHz)
I also enabled 'HALT Command Detect' (default is Disabled)

Could either OR both of these settings have helped or am I just lucky?

I have read many threads about overclocking problems on AOpen boards so
I presumed it was fairly sensitive to it - therefore it may prefer
under-clocking.
My Case/CPU/Disk temperatures have not dropped.


I have also read about the HALT Command setting along with "Disc When
STPGNT# Detect" (which I cannot find) causing the temperature to drop
4-5 degrees because the processor goes idle when there is nothing to
do.

 

anyone got any ideas ?