Think you can figure out whats wrong with my Latitude? Overheating may be the culprit:

Do you have any external thermal diode (thermal tester ) to put inside near heatsink in laptop to check temps.?
I am almost sure this is due to sh..ty NVidia chip... that why I bought with GMAx4500HD. Stays quiet and cool. Finger crossed and I hope you'll solve all issues.

 

Unfortunately I do not have any thermal testers.
Im almost positive its this Nvidia chip as well. The 4500HD; thats the Intel gpu?

 

akwit, I don't think anyone will be able to diagnose this accurately on a web forum and not be taking wild guesses as to what may or may not be the cause to your system's issues.

It could be caused by hardware, software, drivers or a certain combination of these. Without actually accessing the system it's very difficult not to send you on wild goose chases.

Some weeks ago you posted these same issues in another thread where i'd given you some methods of tracking down the 100% cpu usage. You later posted back that Symantec AV was the cause and removed it. It seems now you've reinstalled it again, unless I'm mistaken.

If Dell is willing to completely replace the system, why not take them up on it. It'll have the latest motherboard and hardware revisions and a fresh factory OS install that you can 'testdrive' for a week or so to see if there's any issue before installing anything of your own.

If you still want to troubleshoot this on your existing system start at the hardware level and work your way down to OS, drivers, and finally installed programs.

To help eliminate pure hardware causes a good option is to download an OS livecd and run it from the burned cd. It's easy, just download a LiveCD image like this one, burn it to a disk and boot your system (you may need to go into the bios and set it to boot from cd first if it's not already). You can even save the LiveCD OS settings etc to a usb stick if you like. Surf the web, run some programs and see how the system reacts and feels. It's a safe way to test without affecting your current setup. When done, just shutdown, remove the CD and startup back into your current windows OS.

Give that a try. If the system still runs the cpu up, then you have a hardware issue and the system needs to be replaced. If not then at least you know the hardware is fine and we start to look into the OS drivers and installed programs.

Hope this at least provides some steps in the right direction.

 

Thanks for that info.
To be honest, ive kinda just lost patience. I simply have too much work to do and too many problems to deal with right now (im in Hedge Funds unfortunately) and I just want this thing to run smoothly already...

 

I agree with you and sympathize about your work with current financial markets must not be easy.

This is why my best suggestion is take Dell up on their offer to send you a brand new machine with a fresh OS. It'll give you the opportunity to eliminate hardware as the cause and also give you chance to start on a fresh factory OS to see how things are running before you install any of your own software. At least this way you don't have to troubleshoot all the way back from where you are now and based on your previous posts you've tinkered quite a bit with things already.

 

In all honesty, I want to downgrad alot of my hardware.
I definitely dont want this Nvidia GPU anymore; its overkill for me.
Also, I prob would have been alot better off with a P8600 over a T9500.

What ive noticed today is that when I minimize or maximize windows, my CPU spikes to 70%+. Also, just SCROLLING UP OR DOWN on a web page spikes it even higher!
Isnt that something with the GPU?
Virtually anything I do spikes the CPU and, things tend to run a bit smoother while undocked.

 

Might seem like a silly question but when you hover over the battery icon in your system tray, what does the current power profile show as ? I ask this because I know Dell CP has a few bugs, one of which doesn't restore the system to the balanced power profile when back on AC. It remains on the power save profile so the cpu is still throttled by 50%.

You can also go into device manager and uninstall your video card driver. Run the system like that for 30 to 60 minutes and see how it reacts.

 

I completely removed Dell CP months ago.

Two questions though:
-Why would the CPU throttle in power save, shouldnt it be saving cpu usage in that mode?
-How can I use the computer without a video card driver (if I uninstall)?

 

The system has no way to "save cpu" usage except to set a max processor clock speed limit (ie throttle).
So a normal task that say would take 5 seconds at 2.53ghz on a P9500 will take 10 seconds if the system is set to throttle 50% - clock is reduced to 1.68Ghz (due to stepping)

Also if your system is throttled at 50% the system believes it's cpu is only capable of 1.68Ghz in this example it will scale cpu according to this, meaning it'll a cpu usage of say 25% when unthrottled at native 2.53Ghz clock the cpu usage would only show 12% for the same task.

1. Even if you removed CP, if the system is in power save mode, your cpu is likely throttled to 50% max in this mode. First check what mode you're in by hovering the mouse over the battery icon in the sys tray. Then left click on it once and select 'more power options'.

Power options panel will open. From there click on 'change plan settings' on the powersaver plan and select 'Change advanced power settings'. Scroll down to 'Processor power management' and expand it. There you'll find the Max and Min limits this profile is set to allow for the cpu when in this mode for both AC and battery. Min is likely 5% and Max is most likely 50%
You can check the other modes like balanced and High performance the same way.

2. The system will still function without the nVidia driver. It'll just load the generic MS display adapter driver. You won't get optimal resolution and settings, but it'll function and be usable enough for you to determine if the GPU driver is causing the issue.

 

How are you reading the CPU usage?

RMClock calculates the usage relative to the current CPU speed and the trigger to increase the CPU speed is around 75%, so the usage needs to be considered in the context of current CPU speed.

John