Yesterday, when I got home from work, my laptop was very sluggish. I have been experiencing the Blue Screen of Death reboot for the past 6 months, but it has gotten worse recently. I thought my 5 year old laptop may be on its last leg. I started running diagnostics on it and ended up with no issues reported. I checked for old/bad drivers and bad hardware. And still nothing. I started researching and soon discovered that the only thing really wrong was that every app and even the mouse were lagging. When I looked at the Task Manager app, everything looked fine. (See first picture below) Plenty of memory, the CPU, and the hard drive were at very low percentages. I couldn't understand it. But then I switched from the standard PROCESSES view to the PERFORMANCE view, and I saw something peculiar. My CPU speed was holding steady at 0.40 GHz (See second picture below). My processor is capable of going over 4 GHz. Now I had a more pinpointed symptom to research. Started reading about what could make my computer do this, and found the answer. If the power supply is not providing enough amperage, the computer will slow down the CPU to protect itself and the battery. Who knew? I unplugged the power cord from the laptop, and the CPU jumped up to over 3+ GHz, and my computer was back to normal. I was shocked. I got out my multimeter, and the power supply was putting out 3.8 amps. It's supposed to be supplying 11.8 amps. So now I have a new power supply on order, and it will be here on Tuesday. Since then, I've plugged it back in, and everything is OK for now. Fingers crossed that it stays that way. I'd much rather spend $38 on a power supply than buy a new computer.
Sorry for the long post, but I just had to share. Maybe it will help you out down the road.
Arkansas lost but the guys had a good time anyways.
