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    HELP- R1 Ridiculous Slowdown and CPU maxed??

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by SumKallMeTIM, Apr 28, 2011.

  1. SumKallMeTIM

    SumKallMeTIM Notebook Consultant

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    Hello all!
    Thanks for taking the time, I hope someone could give me a tip.
    I have an R1 and literally overnight it got this really oddball problem I've been trying to figure out.
    I literally haven't downloaded, added, or changed anything about my laptop but now when I bootup my laptop it literally takes like 5 minutes to start up. When I open any windows it is beyond slow, certainly nowhere close to normal. Stealth Mode is not on, and I've tried every setting from power saver to high performance, to hybrid GPU to integrated to SLI.

    The one clue I've found is that while idle, it says my CPU jumps from 50% of use to 100% and then sits there, but my temps are also well within normal though. Typically my cpu at idle is around like 2%. This is really weird! CPU is maxed but is unsuably slow, and it's not overheating.

    I've run spybot and avast overnight (it took forever) and it was all clean.

    Any ideas guys?? I really wish I could use my lappy again!
    and again, thanks so much!
    :)
     
    SumKallMeTIM, Apr 28, 2011
    #1
  2. katalin_2003

    katalin_2003 NBR Spectre Super Moderator

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    Try resetting the CMOS first.
    Remove the laptop's battery > back cover(two screws) > remove the CMOS coin cell's plug (near the system fan, can't miss it) > depress the power button for ~20 seconds.
    Reverse the above steps (without the button part :p) and turn on.
    Tell us what you get.

    Cheers
     
    katalin_2003, Apr 28, 2011
    #2
  3. SumKallMeTIM

    SumKallMeTIM Notebook Consultant

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    I love you!
    hahahahahahaha thanks so much! I couldnt unplug the little CMOS plug (don't know how you could do that, it's so fragile!) but I did everything else and my CPU seems to be acting normal and i'm back at normal speed.

    I can't say how much I appreciate your tip. Things like this make me so happy, again, thank you!!!!!!
     
    SumKallMeTIM, Apr 28, 2011
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  4. SumKallMeTIM

    SumKallMeTIM Notebook Consultant

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    I'm a little curious what the technical reason for this would be. I'm super glad it's fixed but I still don't understand what happened.
    meh, thanks so much!
     
    SumKallMeTIM, Apr 28, 2011
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  5. unclewebb

    unclewebb ThrottleStop Author

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    It sounds like clock modulation throttling got turned on. This can be triggered by high GPU temperatures or it can happen randomly. What it does is it slows your CPU internally to about 10% of it's normal speed. Any little thing you try to do sends the CPU Usage way up. The CPU is running so slow it has to work like crazy to try and keep up.

    Grab a copy of ThrottleStop from my sig and you will be able to monitor for this next time it happens as well as correct this.
     
    unclewebb, Apr 28, 2011
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