The XP era laptops from Dell saw a certain setting in the BIOS that allows you to adjust the CPU multiplier for CPUs with Intel Speedstep technology.
Basically what Speedstep does is that if your CPU is not using its full processing power during idle states, will it lower the CPU's clock speed to save power.
My Dell laptop experienced overheating after 7 years into service. It would often self-power down when the laptop got really hot. I had been thinking of re-applying thermal paste to the CPU, which can be a very messy job, until I saw that I could tell the CPU to permanently operate at the lowest CPU multiplier in the BIOS.
Basically my original 2.0Ghz machine is now a 1.0Ghz machine with two cores. I don't notice any performance degradation other than the occasional video stutter in a bloated OS like Win7, but never in XP which I can't tell from the original configuration of 2.0Ghz. Plus, my laptop had never experienced any overheating since.
So, ppl with XP-era laptops who have overheating issues, perhaps there is a setting in the BIOS that allows you to effectively underclock your CPU. Do that and the overheating issue will go away with minimum performance loss since this is XP were talking about, the speed demon of the OSes!
Basically what Speedstep does is that if your CPU is not using its full processing power during idle states, will it lower the CPU's clock speed to save power.
My Dell laptop experienced overheating after 7 years into service. It would often self-power down when the laptop got really hot. I had been thinking of re-applying thermal paste to the CPU, which can be a very messy job, until I saw that I could tell the CPU to permanently operate at the lowest CPU multiplier in the BIOS.
Basically my original 2.0Ghz machine is now a 1.0Ghz machine with two cores. I don't notice any performance degradation other than the occasional video stutter in a bloated OS like Win7, but never in XP which I can't tell from the original configuration of 2.0Ghz. Plus, my laptop had never experienced any overheating since.
So, ppl with XP-era laptops who have overheating issues, perhaps there is a setting in the BIOS that allows you to effectively underclock your CPU. Do that and the overheating issue will go away with minimum performance loss since this is XP were talking about, the speed demon of the OSes!