Dell m6600 random lockups- cpu throttling to blame?

[Koharski]

I have a 17" dell m6600 laptop with 32gb of ram and an intel i7 2720QM processor. I am having a problem where my computer will often (6-10 times an hour) lock up for 30 to 60 seconds. Sometimes it will continue to work however the mouse will only refresh at like 1 frame a second. Barely usable.

I noticed my cpu usage would often jump to 100% even though no processes were using more than 5 to 10 percent of cpu. Many of these times I was performing simple tasks like web browsing or playing music on spotify.

At first I thought it was thermal throttling, but according to coretemp my cpu is cool. The temperature ranges from 40c to 74c (highest) depending on what tasks I am using my computer for. Every time the computer locks up the cpu has been throttled to 798mhz.

Right now the cpu is throttled down to 798mhz while I write this message and the computer is operating fine. I'm thinking perhaps when the cpu is throttled at some background process kicks in, like windows update or the anti malware service, the computer is overloaded and the cpu doesn't automatically scale up to the appropriate speed?

I am really at a loss of what else the problem could be. I've run memtest overnight and everything is fine.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's not locking up, something is simply taking up all of your CPU's time, possibly a virus.

Throttling does not lock the CPU up, anyway.

 

[UsandThem]

You could also look at the SMART status of the hard drive or chkdsk. My wife's old laptop became unbearably slow like you described, and it was her hard drive that was beginning to fail even though I initially thought it was the CPU overheating. Maybe Windows is taking up CPU while it is busy marking bad sectors or the like.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/

Also, like LTC8K6 said, you could have a virus or malware.

 

[Gunbuster]

Power supply? My Precision would act a fool from time to time and I'd have to plug/replug power to the docking station. Also it clocked the CPU down when using a 90 watt standard brink and not the small tank they called a 130 watt adapter.

 

[Koharski]

hey guys, thanks for all your advice so far. Sadly I am still not able to diagnose this issue. I ran another scan with vipre antivirus and malwarebytes anti-malware. Nothing came up. Is it possible there is some kind of rootkit or something nasty in there that the average virus scanner would not pick up? It is also worth noting that I have very safe computing practices on this machine - it is primarily used for work and I do not have any counterfeit software.

CHKDSK comes back clean and nothing seemed out of the ordinary viewing my SMART status with crystaldisk, although I must admit I do no fully understand the data. "ssd life left" indicator says 100% which is surprising as this is a 3 year old SSD. I have read 20TB from the drive and written 16TB during it's life.

My power adapter appears to be fine, although I will need to test this more aggressively. 99% of the time this laptop is plugged in at a desk so it does not see a lot of battery only use. I have the 210w model they ship with the quad core versions of the M6600.

What are the conditions that a process using a high amount of CPU would not show up in task manager or resource monitor? I did check the box to show processes from all users.

 

[Ketchup]

Don't forget to "show processes from all users" in task manager, if you are running 7 or Vista. But the performance tab should tell you if the CPU is busy.

Is the SSD busy during the slowness?

Also, don't forget about the Graphics card. If those are overheating, you could be experiencing similar slowness.

Is Windows up to date? Windows 7 can slow to a crawl looking for updates (you would see CPU resources quite high due to one instance of svchost).

 

[LTC8K6]

You can use Intel XTU to see if the CPU is power or thermal throttling.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...treme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-?product=66427

You can use GPU-Z to spot video card problems.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Don't confuse the normal power saving with throttling.

The normal low clock speed when the computer has nothing to do is not throttling. That is just the normal power saving of the OS and the CPU. Known as SpeedStep or EIST.

Throttling occurs when the CPU gets too hot, or when it draws too much power. This is entirely different from SpeedStep/EIST/Power saving.

If you think the CPU is not coming out of power saving mode, then set windows Power Saving to High Performance.

 

[Atreus21]

hey guys, thanks for all your advice so far. Sadly I am still not able to diagnose this issue. I ran another scan with vipre antivirus and malwarebytes anti-malware. Nothing came up. Is it possible there is some kind of rootkit or something nasty in there that the average virus scanner would not pick up? It is also worth noting that I have very safe computing practices on this machine - it is primarily used for work and I do not have any counterfeit software.

CHKDSK comes back clean and nothing seemed out of the ordinary viewing my SMART status with crystaldisk, although I must admit I do no fully understand the data. "ssd life left" indicator says 100% which is surprising as this is a 3 year old SSD. I have read 20TB from the drive and written 16TB during it's life.

My power adapter appears to be fine, although I will need to test this more aggressively. 99% of the time this laptop is plugged in at a desk so it does not see a lot of battery only use. I have the 210w model they ship with the quad core versions of the M6600.

What are the conditions that a process using a high amount of CPU would not show up in task manager or resource monitor? I did check the box to show processes from all users.

Online virus scans, that is, running the scan within the OS, are not always reliable as clever malware can hide from it. Your best bet to eliminate the possibility of a virus is to run an offline scanner, like Kaspersky Rescue disk. You have to download the ISO and burn it to disk, then boot to it. It's free so don't worry.

http://support.kaspersky.com/us/viruses/rescuedisk

Secondly, you said Dell M6600. I assume that's a Precision. Have you run the built-in Dell Diagnostic boot against it? You can do this by, with the machine powered off, holding the Function Key down, and with your other hand hitting the power button. It will run tests against all the hardware, and is accurate about 80% of the time. Also, since this is a Dell, if the diagnostic boot turns up a hardware issue, check your warranty. Depending on the warranty Dell may fix hardware issues for free.

But based on your description of the problem, I suspect that your problem isn't malware or hardware issues, but just a misconfiguration within the OS. To that end, I suggest one of two possible fixes:

1. Run the utility at tweaking.com. This massive utility is like sfc /scannow on crack. It runs a crap load of scripts which reset system files, registry, permissions, and who knows what else to default values. I've known it to breathe life into old machines with old OS installations, and I've never known it to break anything. It's also free. Only downside is that running the full gamut of scripts takes quite a while.

http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html

2. Reinstall the OS. Honestly, I would probably recommend this one the most, as it's fastest, easiest, and deals with all the possible issues you're having unless it is indeed a hardware issue. But then you are left with backing up all your stuff, moving it over to the new installation, and reinstalling all your applications.

However, before you do anything: You said this is for work purposes. Do you have an IT department where you work? If so, ignore everything I said and report this to them first.