Power issues with TM8104WLMi

Hi all,

This is driving me crazy and I'd really appreciate some tips and help
here.


I bought my TM 8104 about two years ago in Singapore. Recently it
started to act up with a power issue. It is generally always connected to the plug and working ok. As soon as I start up a game the
ePowerManagement starts to switch between AC and Battery mode.
Obviously that's annoying enough - as ePowerManagement picks one of
the Battery Profiles and the LCD brightness goes down - and then up
again when it switches back to AC. It keeps doing that for a while.
Then it sometimes stops for a while and starts again a few minutes
later. At one point it seems like the graphics card is not coping
anymore and I get serious lag in the game....and have to stop playing.


I did update all the drivers that I could (the AIT Radeon doesn't have
a new driver for Acer...) but with little to no improvement.


Does anyone have this problem or/and a solution to it. Somebody once
mentioned that because the machine is from Singapore (110 V) the BIOS
might be set to a 110V power setting - while I use it here in
Australia (220V...or 240V?). Well, that whole thing didn't make much sense to me - the transformer should deal with that issue to begin with - and I couldn't find such a setting in the BIOS to begin with.


I'd really appreciate all opinions and tips here. Not only because I'd
like to play a undisturbed game...but also because I'm worried that
sooner or later I'm going to fry something with that constant
switching from AC to Battery - can't be healthy. Like I said, it's
usually fine when not playing games...although there are occasion when
it happens with 'normal use' (I'm a web developer, so I do use it
quite extensively) as well. But usually it settles pretty quickly
then.


Thanks for any tips and hints and help. I did contact Acer Australia,
but have never heard back from them.


Adrian

 

If you emailed Acer Australia then expect a long delay for a response, best bet would be to call Acer directly.

Try removing your battery while on AC, if ePowerManagement is indeed switching to battery mode and shuts down your laptop while on AC with the battery removed then you really should contact Acer by phone.

Also, you may want to uninstall the ePowerManagement program, to see if that is the cause. Your laptop can run without it, you could use Notebook Hardware Control to change the speed of your laptop, it basically does what ePowerManagement does except doesn't have the option to turn off devices such as PCMCIA or Wireless.

But if anything, definetly call Acer.

 

Yeah, it has been three weeks when I contacted Acer Australia...darn.

The problem with 'playing around' with it is, that I'm totaly dependent on the machine working. Actually, not so much me (I work full-time at the moment and have a work computer) but my gf. Her Dell is in Hell (what do you expect) and the iBook is just a piece of old crap. If my laptop goes, she's screwed. So, I get a bit anxious when I think of testing a few things with the laptop.

This being said...the situation does get worse. Yesterday it did it without heavy usage (just had dreamweaver and a couple of browser windows open). The (not) funny thing was the AC led in front was on and the LCD was bright, which indicated to me that it was on AC. But the ePowerManagement had selected a battery profile, with a hibernation time of 3 minutes (how ridiculous is that). When I walked off for a few minutes I came back and the laptop had hibernated...and wouldn't resume anymore afterwards. Had to kill it.

So, you say ePowerManagement is not a core app, hu? I might deinstall it. Just to see if it's this which is acting up.

Getting worried.

Thanks.
a.

 

It isn't a core app, just get rid of it to see if its the cause of the problem.