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

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 3:16 AM, Quin Wills
<quin.wills at simugen-global.com> wrote:
> 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!

There have been a number of comments on this line, but the bottom line
is this: high CPU usafe is a software issue, it is not a hardware
problem. If you drive everywhere at 10mph over the speed limit and
keep getting speeding tickets, it is not because something is wrong
with your car's engine.

If your CPU was overheating, it might thermally throttle itself down
to a slower speed, resulting in poor performance - but that does not
mean the CPU would be at full usage all the time. The primary symptom
would be a very unresponsive, slow & sluggish PC.

You should be looking for background processes that are running and
taking all the CPU bandwidth, not for hardware problems... although a
regular good clean of the inside of your machine is always a good
idea!

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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