Studio 1535 Processor issue

Question

My girlfriend bought a DELL Studio 1535 a few years ago (2-3). The last 6 months or more ago, her processor has been running rampant right after booting to the operating system and with no applications open. I assumed it might be a background process or service causing the issue, so I checked with the task manager in Windows and with process explorer as well. All virus and anti-spyware checks have come up clean. There is not process attached to the CPU making it peg the way that it is. Under task manger, the processor usage shows 100% most of the time the laptop is on (90+% of the time). So through researching on the internet I found out that this is an issue that many customers had with their Studio 1535 units. Multiple people have posted that they have heard from DELL support that the issue is that the motherboards in these units have an abnormal amount of flex in the board itself. Once they 'warp' past a certain point, the processor censor is affected and the processor starts to run at a constant high level exactly like the symptoms she is having now. So it sounds like to me since many people had issues with this exact same problem, and that it's due to a faulty mobo in the unit itself. I called DELL and told them about my findings, and also told them that I knew the unit was out of warranty. I had hoped that since the problem was well documented that they would have tagged it as a defective part and it would be covered regardless. But I guess they don't stand by their defective parts like they used to. Nice. Well, needless to say, my girlfriend is very disappointed in their quality. She takes impeccable care of her laptop, and through no fault of her own, she ended up with a piece of junk. She now needs a new laptop because of this unexpected hardware problem. And she will be getting a recommendation from me to buy a Toshiba next time...

speedstep · Answer

There is no such thing as a flex the motherboard cpu sensor. If you mean the cooling fan is running fast it may need to have the heatsink cleaned so that the cpu does not throttle due to overheating.

JohnBoyo · Answer

I blew the heat sink out a while ago with canned air and let it sit for while before I turned the system back just to be safe. I'm only going by what I've seen in some of the info I have read from other posts on the Internet. That is someone else's way of wording it based off what they heard from support, so call it whatever you want. The point is, when I myself called DELL support, their own support rep told me "it is indeed a problem with the the motherboard and it will need to be replaced". So if he knew that based only off the explanation of the problem that I gave him, then how is it not a known issue?

ejn63 · Answer

What happens if you restore the system back to the way it was when you received it?  This could well be a software problem.

JohnBoyo · Answer

Good suggestion, I thought about that as well. And I may attempt to do that. But to me it seems like a shot in the dark because there is no Windows process or any other one running that would account for the processor load being so high. In fact, most of the time the System idle process dominates the processor usage (up towards 90% or more most of the time). Also, this is why I downloaded and ran process explorer as well, to make sure I did not see something different with that tool that I was currently seeing in Windows task manager, which can be inaccurate at times depending on what type of situation you are dealing with. And both of the process tools coincide. The fact that no process is directly affecting it, would seem to indicate a hardware issue. I'm confident it's that based on how it acts, and what I've read from others having the issue. If you read the posts on the youtube video provided, a few people said that their issue only cleared up after the motherboard was replaced.

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