Laptop Death
So there I was... Browsing my RSS feeds. Man, I thought. This is really slow for some reason. But I didn't really pay attention to it until my hand brushed up against the side of my laptop. Man, I thought. This is really hot for some reason. Heat + Computers = Bad, so I DID pay attention. I checked my fan application and, uhm... My graphics card was operating at 152F IDLE. For those of you who don't know what that means? It was really hot and it wasn't even doing anything. If I went to do something, it would get REALLY hot, overheat and potentially damage itself. Bad news. Turns out the GPU fan wasn't working at all... In the process of working on this, I noticed that my processor is at an unhealthy 800MHz. This thing is supposed to run at 2GHz... It's not supposed to throttle itself. No wonder the computer was slow.
I had this problem before. I installed Vista and didn't work with the power profile and it was throttling the CPU whenever it pleased... I had disabled this. So I thought. I go to the Power Settings and go to fix the problem again but everything's the way I'd left it. According to Vista and all the CPU tools I have, the processor is running at 100%, even if that's only 800MHz. Something has happened to make the processor report that 800MHz is its top speed. Needless to say, I am very upset. I thought it would all clear up after a reboot, so I shut the thing down and worked on it for about an hour to clean up the fans to see if that would at least help the temperatures. It didn't... My laptop looks like a Borg node with all the covers taken off and cables spilling out everywhere.
In short: I think my laptop is dying. The CPU reports maximum speed of 800MHz even though it's capable of twice that. The GPU reports a temperature of 150 Fahrenheit when it's only rendering Windows. Nothing I do can make the fan run faster and nothing I do can make the processor run faster. My laptop, overnight, suddenly became USELESS for anything but browsing the Internet. It has the power of a tablet PC without having the touchscreen. I've been planning on getting a computer, but I was hoping that this thing would last for a LOT LONGER.
EDIT: I found some repair manuals from Dell, so I decided to crack the thing open. First time I did on my own and I managed to clean the heatsinks, so as far as air flow goes, it's like brand new. The GPU fan is harder to spin by hand than the CPU fan... Not sure what that means exactly, but it feels like it's building up resistance and the motor can't run it very well. Of course, Dell doesn't sell replacement fans (only refurbished heatsinks, however that works), so I'm going to have to either work with what I have or find third-party fans. When I booted it on the first time, the CPU didn't work properly... So I took it apart again, worked on the fan (to no avail) and checked to make sure everything was proper... And now the CPU works again, at least. It's sitting quaintly at 2000MHz top clock speed again. CPU fan can average 4000 RPM and the GPU fan can sometimes just barely peak 2000 RPM by itself... Sometimes, if I jumpstart the thing, it can get up to 2600 RPM. Bad... Bad bad bad. Need replacement fan now.