Hi folks...I'm out of ideas, so I hope someone here has one, and I apologize if this has been answered before -- I couldn't find anything in search, but I may have missed it. So anyway, here's the story:

About 6 months ago I wiped Vista from my system and installed XP instead. Took a while to hunt down all the drivers, but I finally got everything working more or less the way I want it. Then, about 2 months ago, I started experiencing extreme slowdowns while running multiple applications -- I installed RMClock and found that my CPUs were topping out at about 95 degrees C, so it seemed like a simple case of thermal throttling. I emailed Dell, and they sent out a repair guy to replace my mainboard & cpu.

That was about a month ago...recently, I've started experiencing the same extreme slowdowns, but it's not an overheating issue -- the CPU temp never goes above 60 degrees (and is usually in the 50 degree range). Nonetheless, when running multiple applications, the CPU cores downclock like crazy...core 0 usually runs at I believe 784 MHz, but I've seen it go as low as 380-something. Core 1 runs as low as around 200 MHz. I've tried disabling and re-enabling every power management switch I can think of, messed with OS power management, etc. I'm guessing it's an issue with XP, but I really don't want to have to go back to Vista.

Any ideas what it could be? Any suggestions to try? I'm open to anything.

I take it that your BIOS, chipset are up to date, right?

What is the difference now and a month ago? Restore point?

cheers ...

Scan for Virus and Spyware as well

I've done a virus and spyware scan, although I'll do both again tonight at maximum sensitivity (takes a while when your CPU is running at 200 MHz ). I didn't check out BIOS or chipset drivers -- since the motherboard's only a month old I figured they were up to date, but that's definitely worth looking at.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know if either of them fix it.

Ok, ran the virus and spyware scanners again at maximum sensitivity, and didn't turn anything up (well, a few tracking cookies on AdAware, but pretty sure those aren't doing anything). The chipset drivers are up to date according to dell, and I updated the BIOS firmware. Still having the problem. Any other ideas?

Check processes and see which app is using CPU resources

Funny, I had the same problem with my m1210. Finally installed and configured NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) and all is well now.

Google NHC and try it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I installed NHC and so far, so good -- can't say for certain yet whether this has fixed it, but I'm running several graphical and cpu-intensive programs simultaneously right now with no throttling at all.

To me it fixed everything. When CPU-intensive app is running, CPU is to the max, otherwise it is back to the low profile. Too bad the guy had stopped the development like in 2007. In any case this thing rocks. I put my CPU to undervolting as well, at max it is going to 1.1v instead of the default 1.625v.

One more thing: get rid of RMClock. This thing supports throttling instead of preventing it in the default settings. It is probably configurable somehow, but with their "new and improved" GUI I was unable to figure it out.

Several days now since I put NHC on my machine, and it hasn't downthrottled once. Thanks a bunch! This definitely seems to have fixed it.

Hey, glad to help.

There is a rep button BTW

At this point I am running my "new" T7200 at 1.025V for the max (12) multiplier. Dells' default is 1.225V I believe.

Undervolting features of NHC are amazing. However, you need to be careful using them. Be prepared to hard boot your laptop if you set them too low.

lol indeed! I figured there must be, but I was apparently not patient enough to let it load.

Anyway, thanks again.