Toshiba M200 Problems

So I have an old school Toshiba Portege m200 tablet pc. Since a week ago, my battery life has started to become terrible, and so did my life. I don't believe its the battery, because I've tried two different batteries for it and it still drains them at the same rate, so I'm left to believe it's my computer itself, which is angering me like no other!

So if anyone can give me any suggestions, I would forever be in your debt.

 

1) Check your power options to make sure that the power profile wasn't accidentally set to Performance mode. Tweak your profiles a little to draw out more battery life.

2) For better power management, consider using a program like Notebook Hardware Control; it allows for undervolting, which is something you might want to consider.

3) Make sure that the battery life hasn't dropped because the CPU usage spiked; monitor your CPU usage using Task Manager. Malware can cause serious performance problems, which could in turn affect battery life.

Other things you can do to make sure things run smoothly:

1) Make sure all drivers are up to date
2) Follow this guide for tweaking Vista.
3) Run Disk Cleanup, Defrag drive as well
4) Start > Run > type "msconfig" > disable unnecessary startup programs

 

1.) its on power saving profile, and im losing a percent every other 10 seconds.

2.) I dont trust NHC because it says both batteries are 30% wear level, which is impossible.

3.) I thought this may be the cause and I ended up reformatting. Nothign on it, just basics such as zune software, winrar, etc.

As for the other suggestions:
1.) All drivers except for touchpad are up to date (newest ones from 2007)
2.) XP on this machine. I loved tweaking vista though. Was sort of like a puzzle.
3.)I have perfectdisk 2008 for defragged and have tried that so many times yesterday.
4.) Tweaked as much as i could out of msconfig.


Should I try re-calibrating the battery? Would that somehow help me or are the batteries dead?

 

Either the batteries are dead (probable given their age) or it may be a software issue in reporting remaining battery percentage. Btw, measurements of battery wear are sometimes inaccurate; I've had different apps measure anything from 5-30% wear on new batteries. However, in your case they are likely correct; unless you can explain why your batteries drop by 1% every 10 seconds.

 

Also today, it went from 34% randomly to 3% in a matter of seconds! It was just a crazy jump.

What programs can I use to check my % wear beside NHC?

 

http://www.passmark.com/products/batmon.htm

I am used to having battery wear information available to me b/c I run Ubuntu on one of my machines, but this is a good program.

 

while running prime95 to recalibrate battery, there was a jump from around 52% to 3%... seriously what the hells happening