I'm experiencing a bizarre issue with a Latitude C400 I bought from eBay.  It's the 1.2 GHz model.  The CPU seems to be running at very unusual frequencies.  "My Computer | Properties" often reports 788 MHz.  Occasionally it reports such odd values as 128 mhz or 250ish mhz.  I tend to believe it--during these times, the machine is running extremely slowly.  However, I was under the impression that this system would only run at 1.2 GHz or 800 MHz--am I wrong there?

 

Even at 100% usage, the CPU never runs at 1.2 GHz.

 

I ran diags and everything seems fine except the fan.  The fan was set to run at 4500 RPM, yet it was detected as running at 1800 RPM.  So this leads me to believe I may have a fan issue.

 

I downloaded I8kfan (http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/) and it claims that the CPU runs in the range of 45-50 degrees.  That doesn't seem too hot to me.  However, it does report only 1800 RPM on the fan.

Has anyone seen anything like this?  Any suggestions?   I  have played with various BIOS settings for speedstep, but nothing seems to make any difference (which makes sense, as XP should control all of this).

 

Also, I have booted to a compltely fresh copy of XP and I get the same thing--so I don't think the OS is corrupted.

 

Thanks for any input!