CPUs running at 100% (Hardy Heron, Dell XPS M1330)

[Quin Wills]

Hi

I've one of the Dell XPS M1330 machines that come shipped with Hardy LTS
(Dual Core T7300 2GHz/800Mhz 4MB Cache, 2GB RAM). I've had it for a year and
use it for scientific computing.

As of about 2 weeks ago I notice that the my youtube and BBC iplayer
playback started becoming jerky after a few minutes into any video. I've not
made any software changes recently. I ran the usual DELL hardware checks and
reinstalled my flash plugins, without improvement. My laptop began freezing,
including with standard applications like openoffice or when running a CPU
intensive job during analysis (I code in R). So the problem appears to be my
CPUs and I've confirmed, using the system monitor, that they rapidly hit
100% before my laptop freezes.

I see there are some CPU tests out there, but have never tinkered/tested
with any CPUs before. I prize this machine (a lot) and have heard horror
stories around naive CPU testing. This has become a real problem for me - I
use this machine 10+ hours a day - so any advice on what I should do next
(explained to me like I'm an idiot) and what the problem is likely to be
would be very, very, very welcome!

Thanks a stack,
Quin
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