Dell Inspiron stuck at .38 GHz

Diggs

Diggs

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Yes, Dells stuck at their lowest speed is usually a non-Dell power supply but this has its OEM charger and I have tried another OEM Dell charger with no luck. When I plug in a non-Dell charger I get the splash screen about non-Dell chargers so I know it is sensing chargers correctly. When I brought it into the shop from the customer's place I saw the CPU peak at 3.08 GHz for just a few seconds before locking in at .38 GHz again. As a side note a few months back I put in a SSD but all was good at the time. I have Googled and read a ton of posts from other forums as this is not a rare occurrence but none of the suggestions have made a difference. I have -

Updated the BIOS
Turned off Speed Step
Booted on battery only. Booted on charger only. Rebooted on each.
Checked Intel drivers and ran Intel's assistant that found no updates available.
Pulled battery and unplugged and held power button down to drain the caps.

As I'm typing this the only thing I can think of is to check the CPU fan to be sure it works. Other than that I'm out of ideas. Suggestions before I admit defeat?
 
Just curious, but have you tried restoring the power profile to defaults in Windows?

Sometimes those things get set to 1% max CPU or something stupid, and the system responds accordingly.
 
I did check the power settings for the CPU. Typical default settings. Min is 5% and max is 100%.

A bit of new behavior - I let it sit without being plugged in and with battery removed for the night. It started up on full speed this morning. I plugged in the charger and the speed dropped to .38 again. Unplugging the charger and/or rebooting doesn't change the speed. It's stuck back at .38 GHz. I'm inclined to think I have two bad chargers but why won't it jump back up in speed when booted on battery?

@add - I pulled the battery and charger, held the power button down for a full minute. Plugged only the battery back in and it boots back up to full speed. I had tried this before but only held the power button down for 10-15 seconds. Again - It points to the fact that I have 2 bad chargers that both provide proper voltage but don't satisfy what ever it is Dell needs to throttle up or is there a problem on the MB that a new charger won't resolve.

Even if I let it sit running on battery it eventually drops to .38 and stays there.... :(
 
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Check the BIOS, if it says unknown adapter it's busted. That splash screen isn't all knowing, the BIOS should tell you what's attached and be able to identify the wattage level. If that wattage level doesn't match what's on the brick, the brick is bad.

Given when you've said here, I'm also thinking you've got bad bricks.
 
A good cleaning and reset of a CPU cooling assembly in most laptops is never a bad thing... though time intense for what it is.
 
The fan appears to throttle up and down correctly. I can hear the fan ticking over slowly. For the minute or two the CPU ran at fun speed I threw Prime95 at it and the cooling fan ramped up and then back down when I killed Prime95. It boots fine on the battery but doesn't maintain higher clock speed and drops right back down to .38 so I have to think it's not the charging bricks but something internal on the MB. It's going back to the customer as-is. I don't admit defeat easily but I've spent way to much time on it.
 
Have you tried this:
In Device Manager > Firmware r/c System Firmware > Update Drivers > Search Automagically Online > and see if it finds anything.

Reboot after whether it finds anything or not.

If this fails try removing/uninstalling the System Firmware then let it reinstall.

Obviously - if its a client machine -take an image/backup first. ;)
 
Barcelona said:
In Device Manager > Firmware r/c System Firmware > Update Drivers > Search Automagically Online > and see if it finds anything.
Click to expand...

Yep, this I did but I did not remove firmware. I bricked a machine once doing that so I'm a bit hesitant to try that with a customer machine.
 
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Boot from a portable version of Windows (not Linux) and see if it still does it. I recommend either Gandalf's PE:

http://windowsmatters.com/

Or if you want to make your own portable version of Windows 10 (highly recommended), then use this:

https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/

You can install all of your own software and it retains it after you've shut down. It's almost as easy as just installing Windows 10. No configuration or BS necessary. Much easier than making your own Windows PE version. If you install it on a portable SSD, it's indistinguishable from a native Windows install on an internal SSD. You can easily make an image of the external SSD once you've got it the way you want it just in case you ever mess anything up.
 
JoelM said:
I'm having a hard time on the website actually finding the download links. I can find the articles about the versions but don't see where you can download it.
Click to expand...
You have to donate at least $50 in order to get it. At that price, Win2USB is a much better value. I should note that I tried the free version and it did everything I needed it to, so you don't even have to pay for it unless you like it and want to use it in your business (I'm pretty sure you have to buy the Professional license for $30 if you want to use it for commercial use).
 
It's BAAAACK! The customer gave it to me. It's a 7th gen i5 Dell Inspiron so it's worth me spending some more time on it. I'll start with Gandalf's and see what I can learn.
 
Diggs, Did you come up with a solution? I'm also working on a 7th gen i5 Inspiron notebook with the exact same symptoms. Recently upgraded to SSD, and now almost constantly stuck at .38GHz. Everything seems to point to overheating, but I ran the Dell hardware diagnostics and everything is in the green. :(
 
we just had the same issue with a machine and it just sorted itself.

we swapped its charger over for our universal one and it seemed fine, then we swapped it back to their charger and it was still fine.
it did a bunch of updates and I think it had a BIOS update as well (wasn't a machine I personally worked on)
 
Danimal said:
Diggs, Did you come up with a solution? I'm also working on a 7th gen i5 Inspiron notebook with the exact same symptoms. Recently upgraded to SSD, and now almost constantly stuck at .38GHz. Everything seems to point to overheating, but I ran the Dell hardware diagnostics and everything is in the green. :(
Click to expand...

As @Big Jim said, it kind of sorted itself out even though I don't trust it yet. I N&P and still saw the .38 but by the time it was done with updates it seemed to fix itself. I'm going to use it here and there personally for awhile to be sure.
 
Thanks Guys. I guess I'll cycle it a few times and see what happens. If it's left to cool overnight, it will run at full speed for a few minutes, and then throttle down to .38GHz. The Dell diagnostic says the fan is fine and I can hear it spin briefly during the test. ...but the fan doesn't turn on (that I can hear) during normal operation. It's almost like it's skipping the fan and going straight to throttling.

I'll try as few more things (reflash the bios, reseat the fan connector, voodoo chanting) and if something specific does the trick I'll post it. :)
 
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