ePowerManagement and Speedstep in Aspire 5601

Hi,

I was fed up with Acer's ePowerManagement utility in my Aspire 5601 (running Windows XP), as it frequently (and randomly) seemed to switch my laptop to lowest CPU speed, and occasionally lowest screen brightness - when on AC power. Following suggestions in this thread from 2004, I uninstalled the ePowerManagement utility to let Windows power management take over.

However, having done this I now find that SpeedStep doesn't seem to be operating: using either the inbuilt CPU speed tool or "Mobile Meter" ( here), my CPU seems to permanently run at 1.6GHz, even when running off the batteries and with no programs open, and using the "Portable / Laptop" or "Max battery" Power schemes. I've checked the (standard Acer) BIOS, but SpeedStep isn't mentioned there, so there's no way or enabling / disabling this.

Has anyone else come across this, and does anyone have any solutions?

 

http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmclock_235_bin.exe

try this utility...

also allows you to undervolt your CPU for LESS heat and MORE battery life
see the undervolting guide in the hardware forum

bigO

 

Thanks for the suggestion - that's a great little utility.

Just for the information of anyone else, it seems that the "High" setting in ePowerManagement allows the CPU to ramp up to full speed when necessary, but powers down otherwise, whereas the "Max" setting keeps it constantly at its highest speed. Rather stupidly, the default profile when plugged into AC power is "Max performance" with CPU speed set to "Max", which is totally unnecessary.

I've just observed this by using the RM Clock utility, but others may have more explicit knowledge of how ePowerManagement works. It seems totally undocumented, though!

 

i hate to say it,, but everything is about ACER seems to be poorly documented..

i deleted all the Empowering Tech software
heck i went back to XP
launch manager is all i need of thier software

enjoy the learning!

bigO