Inspiron D830 / Windows 7 x64 / No power = slow

Edit : It's a Lattitude

Hopefully someone can help me out. When I am using the computer off of the A/C adapter everything seems to slow down.

I initially thought it was the power management settings. I've gone in an moved the PM settings to High Performance and change the Processor Power Management to minimum of 99% and Maximum of 100% when on battery. It didn't help.

Any ideas? I can't find anything in the BIOS that relates to power management that should effect this.

Thanks

Josh

 

I'm wondering if this is battery related? How long does it last on battery?

When was the last time you reinstalled the OS? The first thing I would try is to reinstall the OS, as that's free. If that still doesn't work, I think you may need a new battery.

 

Are you by any chance getting the infamous "AC adapter not recognized" message in BIOS? I think it's normal for the machine to throttle down on AC if that's happening...

 

I thought it was slowing down on battery power?

Now that I look over it again, "using the computer off of the A/C adapter" could mean both ways...

 

In addition to the CPU throtting which can happen if the BIOS thinks that the AC adaptor is under-powered (you can see and control this using RMclock or ThrottleStop) there is the possibility of some background process such as indexing which only runs when there is AC power. Ypu should be able to see this using Task Manager.

John

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

With the A/C plugged in, it works great. When I'm just using battery power it slows down.

The battery is about 3 months old and at that time I reinstalled the OS.

Weird, huh?

 

Thanks for the clarification. It does look as if something in the power profile is slowing down the CPU. I have my computers set to the "Balanced" power management profile for both mains and battery operation.

Which operating system are you using?

John

 

It says Windows 7 x64 in the topic title. He's tried setting it to High Performance and setting processor power management to max speed, so it looks like the power plan isn't doing anything.

Josh, I think you may need to reinstall to see if the OS is causing the problem...

 

Robin, I think I'm going to do that today.. What a pain!

 

What version are you using? If it's Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise, I would make a system image so that you can restore if you ever need.