P150EM clocking issues, battery related maybe?

So my laptop is old, Sep 2012 old and I've never replaced anything but the motherboard once when it fried.

Yesterday everything has been working fine up until one point at the library. To note, my battery holds enough charge that if my laptop unplugs, I have 1-2 minutes at best to plug it back in and off ac power it won't even turn on. This hasn't been a big deal to me because I always have an outlet available.

Anyway, I was at the library and needed to go (in a hurry) and as I was unpowering it windows was taking its sweet time because of some updates. I unplugged it from the wall to wrap up the cable. It powered down and presumably without updating since the updates required a restart from me later. Came back later no issues and plugged it back in then decided to properly restart it and let the updates go through. Queue the issues. Once in a while my screen started dimming for a brief second then going back to normal brightness. My AC adapter light wasn't going out so I didn't think that was the issue (note: my AC adapter is semi-ghetto'd. Some of the black outer cable layer is slightly coming off at the adapter, it is fitted with electrical tape to cover it all then duct tape to keep it in place). This hasn't been an issue for the year its been like this but I understand that it's probably not safe. As noted though this part (since it's at the part where it connects to the adapter) does get very hot. Usually at the library I set the power options in windows to 80-90% cpu max so instead of 2.8GHz with my usual underclocked 3.4GHz turbo clock it stays around 2.2-2.5GHz and I keep cooling passsive so it doesn't bother people near by if I decide to play a game. Because of the screen dimming once in a while still I was worrying about my psu not being able to deliver enough power so I set the game to run off of my intel gpu instead of nvidia one and the dimming stopped. Albeit I'm pretty sure if it couldn't deliver enough power, it would just shut down or bsod.

So I ran a slew of tests when I got home. I noticed that my computer was downclocking a lot. To 2.5 and 1.8GHz which usually it never does. It'll typically hug 2.8 if it needs to. Note in XTU (I have the Prema BIOS) I keep max turbo clock across all active core amounts to 3.4 since it seems to work best for me overall. However, my system was not obeying this and I was seeing cores also all ramp up to 3.6 which it has never done before. I was testing all of this btw with Prime95. Today my computer went to sleep on me testing this after 1 minute. Note in my power settings it cannot go to sleep while plugged in. I've noticed in the system tray that the icon once in a while flashes from the plugged in battery to the battery power only icon. At this point, I'm convinced that it is the battery ultimately causing this issues. I've also had the screen dim on me with my laptop being at full idle so it's definitely not a load issue. I've been running all the same tests with the battery removed (albeit this is annoying considering it sits where the left wrist would sit) and now my system is no longer downclocking and throttling (worth noting even though I run 100% cpu on AC power, I have it set to 90% for battery which is aprox 2.5GHz, so this could explain the throttling). Anyway, with the battery unplugged altogether, running Prime95 at 3.4GHz turbo clock, all is normal, it maintains the clock speed without throttling. Unfortunately the new annoyance is at first I thought this was an issue with one of the new windows updates and XTU. I tried to uninstall them but was unable to so I updated XTU. Unfortunately now XTU will not save my 1, 2, or 3 active core multipliers, only my 4 active core one which is annoying and also seems to still run 4 active cores at a higher multiplier than specified until I move the slide to a different value then back to the one it is supposed to be. This has become very annoying and I cannot find an older version that works nor do I remember which version I was on.

I'm sorry for the long story, just trying to explain the events leading up to and all the testing I've done. Is this ultimately a battery issue? If so, where's a great option for replacing the battery (and probably PSU as well)? I've only found RJTech but I don't have the money to be dropping on a replacement battery and/or psu, at least not that amount.

 

Have you tried a cmos reset (pull battery plus cmos battery press power button 30+sec). Settings may have been corrupted.

Adapter should be able to run the laptop fine without the battery in it, that'll eliminate the battery as a problem (my P170EM has a dead 2-minute battery but it doesn't affect normal operation)

Also heat where the cord damage is indicates failing cable core or insulation. Leakage means adapter may not be supplying enough and/or reliable power to the laptop, and if it melts and shorts it's a question of what your adapter takes with it when it blows up.

 

It might be your corrupted some files when shutting down the system during updates. Try a re-install and see if your issues are resolved.

 

So this was a windows 10 upgrade from windows 8.1. I haven't clean installed it yet. I have the product key for 8.1 but technically don't have a 10 key since it was an upgrade. If I clean install, will it require me to put in a key or will it recognize my system?

 

MS should recognize your key and auto-activate once you're online. You can clean install Win 10 with no hassle. You can always re-enter your Win 8 key if it doesn't automatically activate your copy, too.

 

So I'm waiting on my new PSU and Battery to arrive which won't be till the 24th. I've switched to an older version of XTU. It doesn't kick in my underclock on reboot until I launch XTU now. I've had my laptop power down on me once since this post when running on only AC power. My plans are to wait till my new battery/psu arrive to see how that is. After that maybe clear my cmos just in case that's why my XTU settings aren't saving then probably do a clean install. I've tried upgrading to creator's update multiple times a few months ago and it never worked so my only option was to clean install anyway so that'll knock out 2 birds with one stone I guess. Downside is I haven't clean installed since 2014 on this machine so that's a lot of settings and registry tweaks I'm going to have to figure out I guess.

Edit: I updated from 1607 to 1709 through the update manager since I couldn't get the media creation tool to not give me an error code. Unlike 1703 which always failed, this worked. And from the looks of it my XTU profile saves through reboot (running an older version of XTU) finally without having to launch. I don't think I will need to clean install thankfully.

 

When you upgraded your 8 key should be saved by microsoft as being valid for 10