Windows 7: Overclock Problem... Help!

I'm not a very experienced PC user, so I don't know the ins and outs of overclocking at all really.

Anyway, recently, upon starting up my PC, I got some sort of message which quickly popped up saying something about the start-up failing and something to do with over clocking going wrong. It seemed to start as normal but there's now a constant squealing noise coming from somewhere in the rig. On top of that, when I ran cinebench, I got a score of 4.7 down from 6.06 which I had previously.

I checked the core speed with CPU-Z and it read as 2.7Ghz, rather than 3.5Ghz. Now I might be wrong but that speed is now actually lower than the baseline model, which I think is 3.05Ghz...



I have no idea where to start with this problem so any help would be really appreciated.

Some more info: I brought the PC and it was 'safe and secure' overclocked by the company I bought it from.

The deafult speed should be 3.06GHz, just reset your BIOS to default settings this will clear any overclocks

Thanks for the reply

I don't know how to do that, I'm just generally quite inexperienced when it comes to PCs, sorry!

Is there any way of getting it back to the speed it used to be? Or can that be done later, when I've reset the BIOS?

Thanks

It can be done in the BIOS. Just restart your computer and press 'Delete' or 'CTRL+ALT+ESC;(it may be a different key, refer to your Board manual) or see this How to access/enter Motherboard BIOS

In the BIOS in the last tab search for an option called 'Reset defaults'

when I go into the BIOS setup it comes up with a list of options including 'load optimised defaults' and 'load fail-safe defaults'. Which should I choose? The manual doesn't say anything about what they do.

Load optimized defaults

Ok, that just gave me a a BSoD that flashed up to fast to see and now it's gone into startup repair.

It's failed and given me this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: 21200637
Problem Signature 05: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 06: 1
Problem Signature 07: NoRootCause
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Something was wrong with your BIOS settings, can you reset the CMOS?(theres a button at the back of the case)

Should I press it while in the setup screen or while it's turned off?

Press it when it is turned off then reboot