Dell Insprion 9300 CPU won't run at max capable speed

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook and am wondering if it's time for a replacement. Things were fine until about a week or two ago where the system was running a bit sluggish in Linux during the more CPU intensive stuff like compiling and VMWare. When the CPU kicks into max speed the fan usually goes off as well and since about a week or two ago the fan has been on almost constantly. Figuring I could live with the machine running in max speed I didn't think much of it until now. Running RightMark CPU Clock Utility (RMClock) under Windows I'm told the speed is around 800MHz, as well as the utilities in Linux. Weird thing is the info under System Properties General Tab tell me it's running at 1.86GHz... BIOS tells me the min is 800MHz and max is 1.86GHz, however it is currently at 800MHz. Running the usual stuff in Windows and Linux that I know usually would spike the CPU into max speed no longer does this. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Set it at High Performance.

for example my T9400 CPU On Balanced mode runs at 2.53Ghz

on Power Saver at 800Mhz

on High Perforamnce 2.66GHZ!!!

 

I take it you mean the High Performance profile in the Windows' Power section? I have set it to what I believe is called "Max Performance" in there, but still no change.

 

If you run something like Prime95 or another stress testing program, does the CPU still not clock up to full speed? Are you perhaps getting the infamous "AC Adapter not recognized" error?

 

Last night I just re-installed Windows XP Home Edition that came with the notebook, wiping things out and starting from scratch. During the install the CPU never kicked up into full speed and the fan never went off. While I have not tried running Prime95 or similar stress testing programs I have gone through the process of compiling a program, which have kicked the CPU into full speed in the past. I am not receiving the "AC Adapter not recognized" error... in fact I'm not receiving any kind of error messages, which has made this all the more difficult in determining what's wrong.

 

have you flashed to a new BIOS recently? i have the studio 1555 and noticed a ton of CPU throttling going on with the A11 BIOS update. After flashing back to the A08 firmware the throttling disappeared and now my CPU is running at full speed

 

Unfortunately I have not done a BIOS flash before this has happened. I have however re-flashed the same (current) BIOS with not change at all.

 

Anyone? Or is this machine a lost cause?

 

Get a copy of CPU-z, and let it open fully. Watch the clock speed while you do something CPU-intensive (on my old beast of a laptop all I need to do is grab the CPU-z window and drag it around for my clock speed to jump from 800mhz to 2000mhz, yay Pentium M!). Speedstepping is just something you have to get used to (or at least I've yet to find a way to truly disable it without setting yourself at the lower frequency indefinitely).

If THAT doesn't work, I'd say try loading a Linux live CD and see what CPU clock speed you get that way. Good luck!

 

Is it possible your fan / heatsink have alot of dust buildup in the fins causing the system to run warm? When the fan started running all the time on my Studio 1536 it was time to blow out the fins. Also the system seemed to run slower. My 1536 is nolonger running w/ the AMD guts, it now has 1537 ( Intel ) guts. Seems thing to run cooler w/ Intel inside.

 

I have done things in Windows and in Linux that would definitely cause SpeedStep to kick in, but it never does! That's my problem so I guess one final question in regards to this is, is this a problem with the CPU or a problem with the mainboard? If it's a CPU, I may be able to obtain one for cheap and replace.