Is my Athlon XP terminally ill?

A few days ago, my pc would not wake up after power saving (HD's off and monitor off after inactivity), so i shut it off. It then would not start back up. I narrowed it down to either the Motherboard or the cpu, and I tested an old Duron, which worked fine.

So then i tried running the athlon underclocked, and it worked.

let me give my system specs and then continue:
XP Pro
Enermax 350 Watt PSU with one fan in back
Soyo K7 ADA v1.0 (with latest bios update)
Athlon XP 1700+
Crucial PC2100 DDR 256MB and Crucial PC2100 DDR 512MB
specs for MB state: "For AMD Cpu
200MHz FSB Cpu set to 100MHz

266MHz FSB Cpu set to 133MHz"

it used to run at 133Mhz bus speed, but now only works at 100Mhz. When i try to set the bus speed up to 133 using the switches on the MB, it acts just like it did when it initially would not boot (no video, no beeps, fans working). When i try to change the bus speed via the BIOS the screen flickers, and then it boots at 100Mhz again (auto recovery or something)

Could anyone suggest any solutions or ways i can either get my cpu back to 1,47Ghz (its at 1.21Ghz now, at a bus speed of 110Mhz, the highest my pc will allow and still boot) or otherwise how can i test my cpu and check whether or not it is in the process of a slow and painful death? I dont know anyone who can plug my cpu into their machine and check.

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it seems that the underclocking has not completely solved the problem; this morning my computer once again did not come out of the same power saving mode, and I had to shut it off. Luckily it did restart, and did not halt at boot like before. What is going on here?

Hiya,
By power saving mode I assume you mean stand by. I never have liked stand by, I have always found it unreliable. Back to the cpu, have you altered the multiplyer ? or has the cpu been subjected to extreme heat (over 70ºc). Try lowering the multiplyer till you can get your FSB back to 266 (2x133). Also check the CPU is getting enough voltage tell your bios to give it 1.7v.

~Hot-Stuff~

First, turn off the powersaving mode stuff. It never worked for me and caused the PC to lock up. Second, run with the default settings and see what happens. Try to get a stable configuration. The only way to troubleshoot is to change one thing at a time. Not very easy if you only have one PC.

the jumpers for the multiplier dont seem to do much.
I dont know if this is because of the board or because this is an athlon xp 1700+. When i set the jumpers to various multipleirs there is no change in the MHz speed of the cpu (Always 1100mhz)

I made sure that I switched the jumpers controlling the multipliers to manual...

also i put the vcore to manual and boosted it to 1.74 (1.72 was the default vcore in the bios) This has not improved the boot success rate (as it stands, it takes about 6-8 shutdowns/restarts to get the ball rolling)

my pc has suddenlty decided to actually boot when its suuppose to, but i am still unable to run the cpu at the 133 Mhz FSB multiplier (266 FSB) . It only boots at the 100 Mhz multiplier (200 FSB).

I've recently bought a Xeon processor -- I'm never back to AMD processors again!

im always using intel.

I agree that amd's are faster and better value for money. However they tent to crash when working at full speed( eg on games)

Pentium 4 is a better option. They perform great in all games, never crash and they are good build quality.

I just bought myself an pentium 4 2.4ghz 533mhz fsb for £50 on ebay!!

www.ebay.co.uk - theres loads on there