Processer suddenly drops and sticks at a fraction of it's speed - SOLVED

[Sumotku]

I'm adding the solution to the top of this post.

The fan was replaced and all is well again. It spun freely so I suspect it was drawing too much current. Found the part at auction, spent an hour or so replacing it and bob's your uncle.

Thanks again everyone.

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I have a Dell Vostro 1700 that has done me well for 5 years or so. I upgraded the processor back in '08 to a T9300 (2.5Ghz dual core penryn). Yesterday, I found myself frustrated with the performance, sort of vaguely, not instantaneously with a clear precedent. I figured it might be viral and figured it's been a year since the last reformat so I went ahead and did one. It used to crank after reinstalling Win 7x64, but still seemed sluggish. I watched the All CPU Meter gadget and it stays at one value: 775Mhz now. I tried CPU-Z and it reported almost the same figure 795Mhz, and did not fluctuate no matter what I ran. The RAM remains the same quantity and there are no other bugs to report. The dual cores do show independent activity. I downloaded the lastest BIOS, which was already installed, and installed it successfully again. No change. I went through the BIOS settings with a fine toothed comb, which I've done many times over the years and everything is in order and there are no settings to control CPU behavior anyway, speedstep is always on with this BIOS.
I've never seen a bad CPU myself. Is that what I'm dealing with you figure? I do have another to test with but it's a several hour job and it's a crappy 1.6Ghz proc to boot so I'd like to put it off for a spell and see what you all think.

Just confirmed the 'Maximum Processor State' is set to 100% for both battery and plugged in.

CoreTemp reports normal temps, about 40C°

 

[Denithor]

Are you sitting there with system idle and it's low speed? Sounds like SpeedStep or some other power-saving mode to me.

Give it something to do (prime95, Intel burn test, etc) and check the speed while it's running a CPU intensive benchmark.

 

[N4n45h1]

I feel like it might be throttling.

Try using a program like ThrottleStop to determine whether it is doing so. If it does seem to be locked at a particularly low multiplier, you can set the multiplier to the max setting and click turn on. To allow it to continue to scale for performance and power usage, enable the C states function.

Hope this helps!

 

[holden j caufield]

have the same cpu, use rmclock or throttlestop to undervolt keep it at high speeds.

 

[Sumotku]

Speed is the same no matter what I do on the machine.

If throttling I think it would still fluctuate, even a tiny bit, which it does not under any load.
I did find Throttlestop and managed to blue screen it within a few minutes : ). I did some reading but have to do more to understand the program. I was playing with the multiplier, which I seem to recall maxed out at 11 on this machine, I could be wrong. I was able to jack it up to 11.5 before it crashed. So the real question, why did this happen????
How can I get it back to the automatically monitored way it was? Has anyone ever heard of a virus, etc. that can pull this trick off? If I can get speedstep to work with Throttlestop that would be a consolation.

I thought all the processor controls originate in the BIOS. I know some programs can access cpu features within windows. This is a fresh installation with the same problem though. And the BIOS has been flashed. I'm having a WTF moment, seriously.

 

[Sumotku]

I found that with Multiplier set manually to 11, SLFM unchecked, C States and Power Saver checked on in Throttlestop that I can get back much of the earlier behaviour. Why did it happen is a big mystery. One clue may be in a thread google spit up:

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...multiplier-stuck-2-0x-core-speed-398-mhz.html

I ran Throttle stops TS bench for a spell and did not hear any fan spin up though it got up to about 52°C, it could well be a dead fan and a built in failsafe I'm dealing with. I'll be sure to report back. Curiously, the All CPU Meter gadget reports 775Mhz even when Throttlestop and CPU-Z read 2200 Mhz, what does that tell you? Knowing where it's getting erroneous information might lead to why it happened in the first place. I triple check the BIOS and everything is as it always was in there and looks like there's no problem with the system. On board diagnostics turned up nothing as well. Wild stuff.

Thanks for the help everyone!

 

[Sumotku]

It's getting more interesting. CPU-Z, which has always been reliable, now reports the clock speed at higher than it's ever been, or should be allowed to go, 2692 MHz, with a multiplier of 13.5. Again, this is a T9300 2.5 GHz processor. Also, when I started up the machine this morning Throttlestop was not running. I'm happy with the performance : } but this continues to confound me. Speedstepping is not running either, it just sits there at 2692 MHz. Since the BIOS values are optimal and accurate and it's a new install on a fresh partition I can only think it would be a daffy processor. I welcome any ideas you may have.

Note, I turned off Maximum Performance in the power options, required by Throttlestop for it to work properly. Using Balanced power option speedstep returns, and clock speeds are normal. No utilities in use. This shows the processor is acting as intended. So, I have a processor that locks itself to 775 MHz for no reason, then returns to normal. Can't wait to see what's next.

 

[Sumotku]

A few hours later and I'm back to being stuck at 775GHz. I'm going to try and replace the processor as soon as I get time.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

A few hours later and I'm back to being stuck at 775GHz. I'm going to try and replace the processor as soon as I get time.

775GHz!? Nice chip!/sarcasm

 

[386DX]

Have you changed the Power Adapter? I've ran into issues with Dell laptops where someone has switched power adapters from a 90W to a 65W without realizing it and that caused the laptop to not throttle up to full speed. There's a bios setting I believe called "adapter warning" which when enabled will tell you if an improper adapter is attached during bootup.

If that doesn't help you may want to open up a command prompt and run the power config command

powercfg /?
powercfg -L
powercfg -Q

First one is to list the commands, second is to list power profiles, and third is to query. Use that to verify that the maximum CPU speed is set to 100%, etc.

*Tip: add the "| more" at the end of the command to pause after each page of text

 

[SpeedTester]

Stupid question but is your cpu heatsink clogged with dust?

 

[Sumotku]

Thanks 386DX, I checked all you suggested and it's as it should be. "| more" is a great tip, new to me and very helpful. Power supply is putting out it's rated voltage which I just confirmed.

SpeedTester, I haven't opened it up yet, no time right now and I've got it running pretty much normally with Throttlestop for the time being. I have a new fan on the way and will try a different processor as well when time permits.

Thanks again everyone for the excellent help.

 

[EliteRetard]

Well if/when you crack it open you might want to look for bulging/leaking capacitors or other damage on the board...

 

[DominionSeraph]

Good luck. My Dimension E521 is stuck at P0 except if I go into S3 sleep where it'll lock to P1 upon resumption, and my hard drive acoustic management resets to "quiet," which even installing the Nvidia controller drivers and forcing the setting there hasn't completely fixed.

Oh well. At least it's still fast as hell. And losing S3 sleep doesn't matter so much when you boot in 15 seconds.

 

[Sumotku]

SOLVED, see first post, edited with the solution: bad fan.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Good luck. My Dimension E521 is stuck at P0 except if I go into S3 sleep where it'll lock to P1 upon resumption, and my hard drive acoustic management resets to "quiet," which even installing the Nvidia controller drivers and forcing the setting there hasn't completely fixed.

Oh well. At least it's still fast as hell. And losing S3 sleep doesn't matter so much when you boot in 15 seconds.

bull shit 15 seconds :whiste:

are you counting post?