Fantastic. Throttlestop seemed to fix it for me. I have a month old Latitude E6410 running Win7 and every day I have had these mysterious slowdowns where everything slows down to a crawl. Running TaskManager shows that the TaskManager process on it's own would use 10-20% CPU, and other idling apps would do the same. Originally I suspected bad drivers or Win7 itself, but more research led me to believe it was overheating and then I came over this forum.
I started up Throttlestop and after toying a little with the program suddenly everything was working ok. CPU idle status went back to high nineties, and my dormant programs now take 0-2% CPU compared to previously double digit. Exited ThrottleStop and everything still works fine (CPU temperature was fine by the way). Maybe a little premature to conclude ThrottleStop fixed it, but I guess it might have taken the CPU out of a state where it was throttling everything. If so, what about a BIOS fix DELL? Will report back with my experience next time I see this problem. Usually a daily occurrence, so will probably not last long...
Anyway, to say it nicely, I am not impressed with my DELL laptop. This problem is one of 3 hardware related problems I have noticed in the short time I have used it. The wi-fi will periodically die and I need to disable/re-enable it in device manager to get it back working. If I connect an external screen without closing the lid, it will often go into a cycle showing the display for a split second on alternating screens. Probably my last DELL...