O.k., I successfully O/C'ed to 3.17 without crashing. Ran Futuremark, Norton Performance test, games, ect... Worked fine, but didnt improve scores very much, if any... So I decided to return to my first O/C of 2.88ghz. I had a couple strange things happen...
1) When I returned to the bios to change the settings back (RAM multi from 2 back to 'auto', and CPU freq back to 160 from 175), the RAM dropped down to DDR 233 er' sumthin, not 400... It wouldnt retain the past settings initially. I rebooted a couple times, and eventually got it right.
2) CU-z still said my clock speed was 3.15 and all the accompanying values. Rebooted a couple more times, and eventuall CPU-z came around correctly.
* AT THIS POINT, MY COMPUTER IS "BACK TO NORMAL" @ 2.88GHZ, 4:5 CPU/RAM... EVERYTHING LOOKED $ PERFORMED LIKE IT DID WHEN I INITIALLY O/C'ED TO 2.88
then I got a brainwave... bad move I guess...
3) the ONLY thing I changed was tightening the ram to 3-8-3-3 from 3-8-4-4...now my pc is all fubar'd... It took longer than usual for windows to start to load (the first time), so I reset it- went back in the bios and doublechecked to make sure everything was ok, and let it go... It took about 30 seconds for it to get to the black-screen with the white bar-graph across the bottom... Another 30 to get through the Windows black boot screen w/logo...
It still takes about that long after many attempts to fix it. Any & every Norton tool, rebooting 15-20 times total...