Windows 10: Troubleshooting slow CPU speed and utilisation

I have been struggling with this problem on my laptop for several months now and it has been getting worse and worse - I haven't found anywhere online with the same exact issue so I am asking for help here!


The laptop is a Lenovo U41-70 with an i5-2200U CPU @2.20GHz. The problem being, for the vast majority of the time it runs at exactly 0.48GHz, and the "utilisation" shown in task manager never goes above 22%! When I say above the issue is getting worse, I mean it does this for more of the time. Whereas it originally did this for perhaps half an hour here or there when in use for several hours in a day I now have reached the point where it is constantly in this state.

Hopefully the ways I have experimented to try and fix the issue will help in any diagnosis:


- Updated drivers and BIOS. No improvement.


- Starting in "diagnostic mode". No improvement.


- Starting in "safe mode". Actually runs fine! I am not familiar enough with Windows to know how to interpret this though...


- Running lots of intense programs at once to try and "force" it to use more processing power. This worked for a few days - after being very slow for a few minutes, something changed and the laptop was finally using the whole chip. However, this is a rather slow way of getting it to work and surely can't be good for the machine!


- Set minimum processor state to >5% in power management->advanced power settings. No improvement.


- Monitored CPU temperatures. All fine there. To be extra certain I opened up the case and cleared out what little dust there was in the fan, and also reapplied new thermal paste to the heatsink/cpu connection.


...honestly there might have been other things I've done that I can't remember. At this point I'm ready to hear/try any suggestions! I realise with the laptop being several years old it is tempting to bin it and get a new one, but this is now such an odd issue I really want to get to the bottom of it first and maybe save my wallet the trouble.


Thank you for getting this far and I hope you can help,

Louis[MC]

:)

 

CPU Clock speed locked at 0.79GHz

Hi, I have an i7-4500U CPU and for the last few months my system starts at full speed (2.39GHz) but as soon as the CPU goes below 30% utilisation after startup, the system locks the clock speed to 0.79GHz even when the fan is off. The CPU temperature is
around the 50degree C mark, therefore should be allowing the processor to go up to full clock speed.

I've changed the power settings to set the minimum clock speed to 50%, but that has made no difference.

 

Download speed is slow when downloading apps from the Store

Hi Elijah,

A few possible reasons can cause slow download speed when installing apps. To help us identify the cause of this issue, we would like to know the following information:

• Do you also experience slow connection when browsing the Internet using Edge?
• What is the make and model of your phone?
• What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?

Looking forward to your reply.

 

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Hi Riel,

• The latest update I have showing is "2018-02 Cumulative update for Windows 10 Version 1709 for x64 based system KB4074588"
• I've tried all the below steps suggested by Eeshwar Kumar in this link: Why is Windows Store's download speed so slow?
• And also all by Jane La in the below: Microsoft Store Very Low Download Speeds

Reuben