My Dell Latitude E6500 was locking up on me on a regular basis. I was finding that after using the machine heavily for good part of the day my CPU would be maxed out at 100% usage and getting it to come back to a usable state was difficult. Even after a restart at times I was finding that the CPU was still pinned, and the computer was basically unusable. I tried everything from removing my anti virus (Eset NOD32), removing plug ins from FireFox/IE, and trying to keep notes on what I had running or what I was doing when the lockups were occurring. I then saw a headline on Slashdot that alerted users of the E6500 that there was an issue with the bios throttling the CPU when the temperature got to a certain point. Now this is standard practice for laptop designs, but the machine is supposed to be able to handle it in a way that is not noticeable to the user.
I found the following post on Dell’s forums, which outlines pretty much exactly what I was experiencing, but with an E6400:
All said and done I took the advice and updated my bios to the latest release at this time (A18). So far the issue has been put to bed, and it was noted in the release notes that an issue with heating was addressed. The bottom line is that if you are having the same issue, upgrade your bios to the latest and greatest. If the issue pop’s up again I will be sure to update this post.
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