How would I know if a BIOS update failed?

[Tempstar]

I built a system with a P8Z68-V PRO and Core i5-2500K yesterday. After building it, I entered the BIOS menu and Loaded Optimized Defaults.

I then had an issue with the system powering on/off multiple times each time it was turned on from a cold start. It would say boot up and say "Overclock Failed". It turns out the "Optimized Defaults" were applying an overclock: BCLK set to 104, and multiplier set to 42. Not sure why the defaults were doing this, but I just left it alone for the moment.

I then installed Windows 7 and downloaded the latest 0501 BIOS. I went into the BIOS menu and updated the BIOS. The system continued doing the multiple reboots. After updating the BIOS, I manually set the BCLK to 100, and multiplier to 34, and the system now boots successfully.

So I think I made a couple of mistakes:

* I downloaded and updated the BIOS while the system was not completely stable
* I did not reset the CMOS before updating the BIOS, as I have read is recommended by a few forum posts.

A couple of questions:

1) Have I messed up my system? Should I reupdate the BIOS?
2) How would I know if a BIOS update failed? Would it be pretty obvious that there were problems with the system?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Addictedtokaos]

If your system is booting and your bios settings are working/taking effect then your bios is fine. Otherwise, If your BIOS didnt flash correctly you would have received an error or your computer wouldnt boot.

Resetting the CMOS is not required.