Can't disable speedstep or hyperthreading on i5150

[daonesteven]

I was wondering if someone could help me with a problem with my laptop. I have an inspiron 5150, unfortunately, and despite the fact that I have quite possibly the worst laptop ever in the history of laptop business, I'm still trying to manage and get by with it. It runs really hot whenever I'm just doing normal everyday stuff, like using Word, Firefox, Thunderbird, AIM, that's about it (It idles at around 49-52ish when I leave it on for hours and nothing's really running besides my AIM window idle). Since I don't care much about processor speed or gpu performance, I've tried disabling speedstep and hyperthreading on BIOS, but everytime I do this, my system hangs and stops loading in the Windows loading screen with the huge logo and the black background, forcing me to press the power button down for 5 seconds to shut it down manually. Does anyone know why my system does this?

What I'm basically trying to do is downthrottle my cpu speed to 1.6ghz PERMANENTLY (yea i'm weird but I'd rather have a cooler running computer with a better battery life than some performance workhorse). Any suggestions?

Edited January 20, 2007 by daonesteven

[LSudlow]

Windows has installed the hyperthreading CPU driver, so when you disable hyperthreading in the BIOS, Windows hangs when it tries to load. SpeedStep is really the only thing you need to disable to cool things off, but if you really want to disable Hyperthreading, go into the device manager and uninstall both the processor driver, and the "Computer" driver. The correct drivers should be installed when you reboot.

You probably already know this, but there are two other things you can do to keep your 5150 cool. Make sure you periodically clean out the cooling fins in the vent next to the A/C jack. A blast from a can of compressed air usually does the trick.

And you can avoid disabling SpeedStep by going into the Power settings in the Control Panel and choosing the "Max Battery" profile.

Good luck with it!