Core 2 Duo laptop running at 790mhz ??

I found an old Dell laptop yesterday that i had a few years ago, it has a 2GHz C2D cpu. I installed Windows 7 on it and was going to give it to my mother as i don't need it. The only problem is after installing Windows 7 and all drivers it seamed abit slow so i put CPU ID on it and the CPU is at 790 mhz, so i changed the power saving setting so the minimum the cpu can go is 100% and still only 790mhz. I put AIDA64 on and it reads the same even when running a stress test.

In the BIOS it says the minimum cpu speed is 1.2GHz so it should even go that low?? what is going on??

I've dated the Bios and that gave me some improvement as it now maxes at 1598mhz but still considerably less than the 2ghz its rated at.

I cant get my head around it I've tried everything i can think of and it just wont run at 2ghz.

try running a game or other program and then check what it is. My AMD X6 is OC'd to 4ghz, but when im at the desktop it only runs at 800-1600mhz to save on heat and power

Ive tried all the obvious and to no avail.
I have pinned it down to being the power adapter as it was replaced last year with a cheapo universal one, apparently this can cause performance issues due to lack of power to the CPU, I have ordered a new official Dell one so i will soon find out if that was the cause.

Ive tried all the obvious and to no avail.
I have pinned it down to being the power adapter as it was replaced last year with a cheapo universal one, apparently this can cause performance issues due to lack of power to the CPU, I have ordered a new official Dell one so i will soon find out if that was the cause.

adam0926

800 MHz should be enough for your mom anyways. My athlon 64 II 240 runs at 800MHz whenever I am just in the desktop. If you are experiencing slowdowns, you probably don't have enough RAM on that machine, I'd upgrade the RAM to the maximum possible (which is probably 2 or 4GB)

[QUOTE="adam0926"]

Ive tried all the obvious and to no avail.
I have pinned it down to being the power adapter as it was replaced last year with a cheapo universal one, apparently this can cause performance issues due to lack of power to the CPU, I have ordered a new official Dell one so i will soon find out if that was the cause.

-GeordiLaForge-

Oh and the it already has 2GB of RAM anyway and a 8600GT M graphics unit. Its a good lappy now it turns out having a faulty or unofficial Dell adapter can cause loss of performance.
True tho i doubt she would need more than 800mhz but she runs a business in publishing and often has to use psd and indd

[QUOTE="-GeordiLaForge-"][QUOTE="adam0926"]

Ive tried all the obvious and to no avail.
I have pinned it down to being the power adapter as it was replaced last year with a cheapo universal one, apparently this can cause performance issues due to lack of power to the CPU, I have ordered a new official Dell one so i will soon find out if that was the cause.

adam0926

[QUOTE="adam0926"]

[QUOTE="-GeordiLaForge-"]Nah, that's definitely not the problem. I hope that Dell didn't actually tell you this. The PSU can't cause your CPU to underclock...-GeordiLaForge-

There aren't any settings in Dell bios to change this because Dell ship most their laptops with very limited read only bios's.