E1705 Intermittent Processor Speed/Fan Full Speed

I just bought an Inspiron E1705 ; 1.73 GHz T2250 Core Duo; 1GB Ram; 256 MB ATI Radeon X1400.

After one day of having the new laptop, sometimes when I turn the computer on the fan comes on at full speed (right around when it gets to the windows XP media edition) splash screen and stays on at full speed indefinitely (it will stay like that for hours). Even more concerning, when this happens, the speed of the computer also takes a nosedive. It feels like a Pentium 90. When it finally boots up, I look to see the processor utilization and memory allocation. The processor is pegged at 100% (bot cores), with plenty of RAM left, and the hard drive is not pegged (meaning, it is not constantly grinding). The speed of the computer remains to be very slow upon bootup.

This problem seems to be more prevalent when I am starting the laptop when it is cold. It also does the same thing sometime when I take it out of suspend mode.

I have been on the phone with tech support for at least 4 hours. We checked to see the latest version of BIOS, crash analysis, deleted unnecessary files, edited msconfig., and finally a complete reinstall. That did not work, so they shipped me a new laptop. The new laptop does the exact same thing! I have had it happened before I install any additional software. It almost sounds like the processor thinks it is hotter than it is and it is kicking the fan on full speed and derates the processor. I did some searching and some people have had luck pressing the FN Z keys. When I do this the fan goes back down to normal speed, and 75% of the time this fixes the problem (the fan remains at normal speed and you can see the processor utilization come back down to a normal level and things operate quickly). The other 25% of the time, you have to wait a minute and try this again, or reboot the computer. I have not seen any solutions for this problem.

Does anyone have a clue to what is going on? I have two laptops ready to ship back to Dell if I cannot figure this one out. Thanks for your help.

Ryan

 

Did you boot up in safe mode to rule out any software garbage on both of your machines? Ruling out a bad hardware configuration, something is kicking your CPU's in the butt during boot.

The Fn +Z key? New one on me.

 

Have you tried 'I8kfanGUI' by Christian Defilier? He also makes 'SpeedSwitchXP', which gives you a lot more control over Dell's rather unreliable Speedstep management.
'fanGUI' lets you gain direct control over fan speeds, and can be used in conjunction with 'Speedswitch' to allow basically unlimited direct control over Processor and fan speeds, up to rated maximums.