My wife has a Dell notebook and - GASP - their entirely useless tech support hasn't been able to help me with this one. Their standard response of 'reformat your hard drive' just isn't doing the trick.

SOrry - had to get that off my chest.

Anyway, a few weeks ago her computer started running slowly and the system info shows its only running at 788Mhz. I went into the bios and set it for max speed (no power saving) and its still running at the same speed, even when real resource hog programs are running.

Any suggestions, or is the motherboard hatched?

THANKS!!!

The processor clock speed has nothing to do with whatever programs you have running. It is a hardware limitation issue. That said it is possible that the hardware is being restricted by something in the bios having become corrupted. I know nothing about laptops so not even sure if this is practical but resetting the bios to default settings may help. Next read your motherboard manual to see if there are any jumpers or switches that control FSB and CPU Multiplier.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

Hmmm???
First the laptop, then the PC.
Sounds to me your wife is the problem!

There might be a problem with the way your wife treats computers, :o) No, its prob. just quinsidental (i cant spell all that good so bare with me). So it has been running just fine and all of a sudden it just does not?? There are ways that you can make the system run "smoother" but not faster, (if you would like to know just ask), but it sounds like, your bios might be out of date, from what i have seen, computers made in the 2000, 2001 time frame, for some reason, there bios goes bad quick, i had a computer from 1997, and lasted until 2003, without any problems what so ever. You might need to update your bios. Also, this may sound weird and unusual, try running a virus scan, in rare cases, this has been the problem. Let me know what you get.