Pentium M running at full speed all the time

Over the past two weeks I've noticed my laptop fans have been coming on a lot more often than usual, using RMClock today I realise that the procesor is running at the ful 1.7ghz all the time for some reason. I can't pinpoint why this is though. I've run anti-virus, spybot and CCleaner to tidy up my system but there was nothing out of the ordinary found. I've sat here and disabled all non-system critical applications but that has not solved anything.

Does anyone know a way to sort out this problem? I don't want my lappy running full whack constantly, and I'd prefer to sort out the issue without resorting to a format.

Ta!

 

Could you clarify - do you mean that the processor is running at full load, or just constantly at 1.7 Ghz. The pentium M of course has speed-step, and should throttle down to about 800 Mhz, so if not, I'd check your BIOS and control settings (will depend based on notebook manufacturer).

 

You could also download a program like Notebook Hardware Control that will enable you to throttle your processor. It should be throttling on its own though. I am not familiar with Acer's, but you probably should take a look in your power management and see if on battery your CPU is set to run full speed. Hope that helps.

 

Its running constantly at 1.7ghz, even when the machine is sat there doing nothing.

There is no power management installed, I uninstalled it ll when I first got the laptop, I just let SpeedStep do its own thing.

I have RMClock running, NHC doesn't do anything on this Acer.

 

have you tried looking at windows task manager with ctrl+alt+delete.

and looking to see if their is an application that is keeping your cpu at max.

if so tried ending the application or possible unistalling it.

regards.

John.

 

Since you have RMClock, why don't u just use that to lower the clockspeed of your processor right then and there?

 

Try reinstalling the cpu driver and see if that does the trick.

 

If you mean the processor is running at 1.7ghz but in task manager the CPU usage is very low (not 90-99% etc...) but if you mean in task manager the CPU usage is high for no reason, then try something called processexplorer. it will give u more detail than task manager this could be a badly programmed driver just like what happened with my old Dell

 

Ok I switched everything back to default in RMClock, and it seems to do the trick, although if I stop using RMClock then the processor goes right back up to 1.7ghz again.

Is there anyway I have somehow disabled SpeedStep through Windows? I Don't want to run RMClock all the time. =(

 

tried the power settings options in control panel?

checked bios settings perhaps?

 

Yep, nothing in the Bios and the power settings are all normal.

=(

I really don't want to format as I hate hate hate reinstalling everything, but I'm stumped as to what is going on!

 

power settings could well be it.

 

Go into the Control Panel, double-click Power Options, and change it to Portable/Laptop.

 

Why do you have to reinstall everything? RMClock does the job just fine, and its not a intrusive process at all. It takes up exactly 1 process taking a whopping 3mb of ram in the process.

If RMClock was such a resource hog and would be very intrusive to your machine, then I would say take the time and trouble to reformat. But since its such a light program, why not stick with it? You'd rather go thru all the trouble of reformatting and reinstalling crap instead of running an extra measly process in the background and at startup?

So you found a simple solution to your problem? What part of that don't you like? You think windows will manage your cpu with any less resources than rmclock?

 

In device manager, your CPU does show up correctly right?

you checked CPU-Z to make sure it is indeed running at the speed you say? other programs (incl windows) can be deceiving

also have you checked any settings in RMclock that might pertain to the speedstep or other settings (have you clicked default to see if it takes you back to default settings)

 

I would first install Process Explorer to check if there is some new process which hogs resources.

Are you able to switch between different power options in Notebook Hardware Control? It is no problem to run it togeter with RMClock, but rmclock may not provide correct results then (can't explain that).

 

If there are no processes hanging up the cpu from corrupt applications/malware, the power settings in Windows are set to Portable/Laptop, Task Mgr shows cpu idling, CPU-Z confirms that you are running at full speed, then it is likely that SpeedStep is not able to function properly.

Have you done any Windows Updates or driver updates lately? If one of them was the processor driver, the install could have been botched without you even knowing about it. In that case, SpeedStep would no longer function. Get a driver either from the mfr or Intel websites and reinstall it again and see if cpu throttling resumes.

The only reason I mentioned this is that it happened to me twice before.