How To Fix Speed Of Processor Is Being Limited By System Firmware In Windows OS

The Event Watcher in Windows records all most everything that occurs on your system. If your system starts misbehaving, in case you’re getting irregular prompts or error messages, the Event Watcher is a decent place to begin examining. It won’t direct you toward the issue but it will help recognize what might be going on. Each event is time-stamped and a short description normally goes with it. One specific warning that may be of concern to you is the speed of processor is being limited by system firmware warning.

Speed Of Processor Is Being Limited By System Firmware

The warning description looks similar to this;

The speed of processor 7 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 203363 seconds since the last report.

The processor number and group number will change from system to system, so will the time period. Anything that says a processor is being limited will be alarming, however, the fix is very simple

Set Processor Speed In Power Plan

Your system power plan can, in addition to other things, manage how much power goes to your processor. In the event that the value is set too low, you will end up with a slow processor and the ‘Speed Of Processor Is Being Limited By System Firmware’ warning.

Now, Right-click the battery/power symbol in the system tray. Select ‘Power Options’ from the setting menu. Click ‘Change plan settings’ by the current power plan. Next, click ‘Change advanced power settings’ at the very bottom. On the Power Options window, look down and expand the Processor Power Management field. Ensure the minimum processor state on battery and on power isn’t set too low.

SpeedStep Technology

This speed limitation on a specific processor is a feature of Intel processor chips. The feature is called SpeedStep Technology and it enables software to limit how much power the CPU can utilize. The above fix is basically a straightforward method to tweak it. You can disable it totally if you want however to do that, you need to visit your system’s BIOS.

Access the system BIOS and look for advanced power settings, or anything called SpeedStep, and change its state to Disabled. Save the changes you have made and boot into your system.

While you can disable the SpeedStep technology from the BIOS and from Windows GUI, we highly recommend you stick to using the Windows GUI as It is easier to switch between the options, it offers more control, and in the event that you don’t know much about your BIOS, there is a lesser possibility that something will go wrong.