Fail Safe State

Recently I got a message of "Fail safe state - recheck bios cmos setup"

now, when I chose to use fail-safe defaults and loaded the computer it loaded, but I heard this would make my computer run slower. looking at CPU-Z everything looks normal, but I don't remember what my hypertransport speed was.

also, I got a few messages that NTLDR was missing, but apparently it works now. also got a message about boot devices getting mucked up. all hard drive components are available atm as I am posting.

ok, some updates.

First - changing to normal startup from msconfig renders a no boot (presumably NTLDR error).

Changing BIOS to Optimized gets the NTLDR.

Changing to it Fail Safe defaults gets disk read error.

Changing to Fail Safe and back to Optimized loads the computer, and msconfig auto-sets things to selective start up and my applications are under the impression that I just installed them - ie, Firefox deleted my bookmarks and reset my default settings. Any clue what the hell's happening?