Insprion 1720 turned into a piece of crap?!

Hey guys. I've got a really f'ed up problem here.

Yesterday, computer running perfectly okay. Here are the details:

Insprion 1720
Windows 7 RC (Build 7100)
C2D T8300 (2.4 / 800 / 6MB)
8600M GT (256MB)
4GB DDR2

Had the RC for about a couple of weeks, everythings good.

Turned on the computer today, and my processor has gone insanely slow. I'm like '?'. svchost had about 1000 babies overnight (while comp was off) and slowed my computer to a crawl.

happened before when using vista, clean install fixed it. vista sucks anyway, so i clean installed windows 7 this morning, thinking itd help.

ran the UEI (yes its unaccurate), but i was HORRIFIED to see my processor score go from 5.x to 2.3, and RAM from 5.x to 2.9. i reran the test about 1000x, no change.

currently. my computer is just going nuts. processor going all over the place and idle varies from 10% -> 100%. when before idle was around 3%. programs that ran fine before (firefox, rocketdock, etc.) now randomly spike up (well not randomly, im sure theres a reason). its like my processor turned into a pentium 3 over night or something! went around through my BIOS, everything no change, windows still tells me its a C2D. any ideas? perhaps a bug in windows 7 (i seriously hope its the latter, no hardware problems PLEASE GOD!)

i would appreciate any info on this, or share some pain with fellow misfortune gatherers!

thanks in advance guys!

EDIT:

A simple look at CPU-Z has shed some light on my predicament. It appears that my processor MULTIPLIER is stuck at x8 leaving my clock speed at 1595.5 MHz. i thought the OS was in charge of managing it to save power / etc? hmm interesting!

FIXED

Okay guys, if anyone has problems with a stuck multiplier, its not too hard to fix.

1) Disable and re-enable SpeedStep in BIOS
2) Install Intel Chipset drivers from their website ( http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/)
3) Set Power Options in Vista/7 to High Performance.
4) And the thing that did it for me, unplug and plug the power cord. No joke.
5) Make sure you keep CPU-Z open so you can monitor progress!

best of luck!

 

Sounds like you might have an overheating problem. This would cause your processor to throttle, or force itself to underclock.

Download HWMonitor and post your temperatures.

 

Hey thanks for your reply.
I have no idea happened, but all I did was just unplug the AC, and plug it back in. I guess the OS thought my computer was unplugged (even tho it said it was 'on AC power'), and SpeedStep throttled my CPU?

Funny...