Hi guys, new here but would appreciate any help anyone might be able to provide related to a problem I am having with my work laptop. In all my years of working with PCs I have never come across anything like it. The laptop is a T7200 Dual Core Centrino Duo @ 2ghz, 2 gig of ram (matched 1gig pair) running Windows XP SP3, the model is a Dell Precision M65.
Basically at random times, once or twice or something four or five times a day, the CPU usage suddenly shoots up to 100% and moves around between 85% and 100% solidly, sometimes for 30 minutes or more, sometimes until I am forced to reboot. I checked to see which process was causing this and actually the CPU usage is randomly split between whatever apps I am currently running, not one process, this changes everytime task manager refreshes. The laptop is dual core and both cores are being reported as fully loaded.
Here comes the weird part, when I use coretemp to see how much this was effecting the heat of the processor I found out that it wasn't at all and the CPU was actually still at idle temperature. Also, speedstep was enabled BUT the processor was running half clocked at 1ghz so speedstep hadnt kicked in to deal with the extra workload. This leads me to believe that the processor isnt under 100% usage at all but windows seems to think it is.
With tech support in my company we have ruled out a software issue as with a full re-install and minimal company software on the issue still occurs. The drivers haven't changed for a good year and are the same before and after the re-install. The laptop has been virus/spyware scanned with every bit of software under the sun. A fully DELL diagnostics run has been performed saying there are no issues. All windows updates are installed upto SP3. This problem occurs when running with our without the battery.
I, and technical support, are completely at a loss now as to what it could be and I would be keen to hear if anyone else has had a similar problem or knows of a possible solution.
Thanks very much in advance,
James.
EDIT: I should also add, if I put the laptop into hibernate (which takes about 20 minutes when in the problematic state) as soon as I come back from hibernate the problem is always gone.
Basically at random times, once or twice or something four or five times a day, the CPU usage suddenly shoots up to 100% and moves around between 85% and 100% solidly, sometimes for 30 minutes or more, sometimes until I am forced to reboot. I checked to see which process was causing this and actually the CPU usage is randomly split between whatever apps I am currently running, not one process, this changes everytime task manager refreshes. The laptop is dual core and both cores are being reported as fully loaded.
Here comes the weird part, when I use coretemp to see how much this was effecting the heat of the processor I found out that it wasn't at all and the CPU was actually still at idle temperature. Also, speedstep was enabled BUT the processor was running half clocked at 1ghz so speedstep hadnt kicked in to deal with the extra workload. This leads me to believe that the processor isnt under 100% usage at all but windows seems to think it is.
With tech support in my company we have ruled out a software issue as with a full re-install and minimal company software on the issue still occurs. The drivers haven't changed for a good year and are the same before and after the re-install. The laptop has been virus/spyware scanned with every bit of software under the sun. A fully DELL diagnostics run has been performed saying there are no issues. All windows updates are installed upto SP3. This problem occurs when running with our without the battery.
I, and technical support, are completely at a loss now as to what it could be and I would be keen to hear if anyone else has had a similar problem or knows of a possible solution.
Thanks very much in advance,
James.
EDIT: I should also add, if I put the laptop into hibernate (which takes about 20 minutes when in the problematic state) as soon as I come back from hibernate the problem is always gone.
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