overheated, now CPU is crippled?

[Sungrave83]

My 3 year old Dell Inspiron 9300 shut down suddenly while heavily taxed.
-its never done that before
-looking back, I think maybe it was damaged while it sat there probably really hot without the fan running

Ever since then, when I turn the laptop on it goes really slow.
-the system info now says that it is 200 MHZ instead of 2.1 GHZ like it is supposed to be
-the fan also immediately goes to full blast and remains there, whereas previously it would start out low and eventually turn on high as it got hotter while running a movie or game

What happened? Do you think the CPU was damaged by the heat and now it needs to be replaced? Any ideas?

 

[evongugg]

Welcome to the forums!

If the CPU fan stopped working, the processor would get damaged by excess heat while running.

 

[pr2thej]

How did you get into the situation of the CPU being hot without the fan running?

 

[Kari]

boot it into bios and see if you can set it back to normal...

 

[MMclachlan]

Most often with laptops they suck in dust and people don't know they need to clean them out every so often. The fan starts spinning up earlier and earlier as the dust builds up along with the temperature til the fan cannot move any air through the heatsink and it lasts for about a minute then turns itself off!
The good news is this is the thermal throttling of your CPU, slowing down and shutting of to (hopefully) prevent damage to itself.
What you need to do is take it apart around the area where the fan is. You will see the dust buildup on the fan and on the metal fins that the fan blows air into, clean this all out, re-assemble and I'm sure it will work fine again.

 

[dragonsprayer]

no!
impossible - besides the back up, auto off, those cpu do not get that hot