Question : Problem: Why does BIOS not recognize the CPU?

Win 98SE crashes on restart. CPU reduces to 66Mhz. When you turn it on, it might give the no DIMM beeps but generally does nothing. CDROM lights up & after a couple of minutes the second CDROM lights up. The HDs don't kick in at all. Only way to get machine back up is to unplug everything but 1 memory stick, the video card, the monitor, mouse, keyboard. Once the bios kicks in, I have to set the CPU speed, shut down, start up, and I can then plug in the other stuff and get to Windows in safe mode of the master HD.

I tried a dirty reinstall of Win 98SE, but at the restart step, machine crashes again. Tried this several times  :-(

Asus CUV4-XE, 3 256 Mb mem sticks, 2 hard drives, 1 cdrom, 1cdr/w, 1 floppy, nice new Antec power supply. When this first happened and I couldn't restart, I thought it was the mobo, so  bought another CUV4-XE (used), and that's what's in there now.

All the memory appears to be good, having run pairs of sticks during this obsessive restart process. No spyware on this machine, and I ran an a-v scan after the first crash. Error check on the master drive found some and fixed.

What I can't figure out is how something wrong with windows or a hd can make the bios think I've installed a new CPU. Or make it not recognize the CPU.

Answer : Problem: Why does BIOS not recognize the CPU?

Use the utilities in ubcd (www.ultimatebootcd.com) to run hardware diagnostics on your cpu, mb, ram.