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Inspiron 9400 cpu speed problem

post #1 of 4
11/24/08 at 5:21pm
Thread Starter 
Hello all

My Dell Inspiron 9400 runs fine when switched on with the ac lead connected. It continues to do so for 10-15 minutes until you hear the fan starting. That's when the laptop slows down and the speed reduces to 6x999 (only one of the cores working).

This has been an issue for some time and I really have tried everything, re-install of XP home (SP3), CPU-Z monitoring etc...

I have changed the power management completely to a desktop level machine, switched off all 'stand by' timings and made sure all drivers are the up to date versions.

I am very frustrated as the machine, when working is a fine machine.

My laptop specs are as follows:

Toshiba 160GB HD
GeForce 7900 Go 128MB
Intel Core2 T7200 2.Ghz
2GB RAM
17" LCD TFT

Please does anyone know of a fix/programme I may be missing or am I doing something wrong?

Thank you for your advice in advance

The mad one
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post #2 of 4
11/25/08 at 2:10pm
Have you cleaned your heatsinks out recently? It sounds to me like there may be a thermal problem that's causing the CPU to go into thermal protection mode.
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post #3 of 4
11/25/08 at 4:34pm
Thread Starter 
Thank's MrEvil - I haven't tried that yet, it will be done when I have a couple of minutes to do so.

What I have tried (and what does work) is to load a game and exit it via the windows key leaving it running in the background.

As you can imagine this isn't an ideal situation. It's complicated, time consuming and really not the point.

I will clean the heatsink but what is the reason for the cpu working in the right fashion when a game is loaded but not when there isn't.

Thanks again

The mad one
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post #4 of 4
12/3/08 at 1:51am
it is possible the laptop will run with a single core, not sure why your work around works really tho.

But I agree your temps maybe causing your unit to underclock

Monitor both CPU and GPU temps and CPU core(s) activiity.

A quick check of airflow comming out the exhaust ports should give your some ideal if air flow is restricted. but the fins on the heat pipes can get blocked with dust and the only way to really clean them is to open up the laptop and remove the heat pipes and clean them out

While doing that -apply some new AS5 to the CPU and GPU
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