Vaio Z at 1/2 speed???...

Ive had a vaio Z 2.53Ghz for a few months working very well. Lately Ive been noticing that the system feels really slow. I just ran a CPUZ and got the readings that the CPU is operating at 1/2 speed (around 1.26Ghz). I ran a few benchmarks (SySoft Sandra/Everest) and was confirmed again that the system is running at 1/2 speed. I remember that runnig on batteries usually the CPU slows (lower CPU multiplier) down to conserve batteries but mine is plugged-in and it does not make any difference. I opened it up and took out the CMOS battery for a few seconds to re-set the BIOS to see if that would fix it. Same problem.

Also I noticed that my power settings Tab incontrol panel are all grayed out so I cannot change or access them... this is all so weird... I know that setting power settings in XP's to the maximum performance profile, turn off Intel SpeedStep which is what I suppose is forcing my system to permanently using a lower multiplier...

Is this happening to anyone else and is there a fix to this?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

what power profile are you using?

 

Ok, first of all I fixed the Power Options in Control panel being greyed out with a simple registry tweak. Ive tried without success all available power schemes. Right now I am using the always on Scheme which I'd assume is the one that will give me the best performance... but the system still only runs always at low speed... Ive also tried a few ultilities like RMclock and SpeedswitchXP that supposedly can force the system to bypass SpeedStep and keep it on a maximum performance state but the issue remains...

HOWEVER, I just discovered that one thing cures it: TAKING THE BATTERY OUT! As long as the battery is out and the system is plugged-in it works at full speed. If the battery is in the laptop (whether running on battery or plug-in to the power supply) then it defaults always to 1/2 speed. Is there "something" inside the battery (a power management chip maybe) that is screwing things up?... Do batteries go bad and "confuse" the system?... this is so strange...

 

Have you tried to re-install os and the sony drivers?

 

No, that I have not tried and would like to avoid. My OS works perfectly w/ zero problems and all drivers work fine also. I ran a BartPE Live XP CD where I also installed CPUZ and there I also got the same reading regarding the CPU speed and multiplier so I this does not seem to be related to my XP installation or the Sony drivers. I feel this is a hardware/battery issue related to Intel SpeedStep. Unfortunately, it cannot be disabled or tweaked via BIOS.

 

Note that for the profile settings for each individual profile, you can set the maximum and minimum CPU speed for both battery and external power.

Could it be that the registry keys for this got deleted (e.g. by a registry cleaner program (spit!)), and thus are interpreted as being 0? That would limit the speed to the lowest possible, which for this CPU is 50%.

 

Hmmm, why were these greyed out in the first place? This raises some flags.

Uh, no it doesn't. It runs at half speed, that is a far cry from "works perfectly". This is a software issue, something is causing the speedstep software to behave this way. And that something is most likely not a hardware problem.

I think the key here is the answer to point number 1 above, why were these setting greyed out?

Gary

 

CPUZ says I am running at 1.6 GHz while my TT is 1.2 GHz, and not overclocked. Maybe CPUZ has changed?

 

Are U running a recent version of CPUZ? Try doing a quick benchmark w/a program like Everest and that will show U clearly at what speed your system is running and what numbers its crunching

 

Greyed out Power Options in the Control Panel is a fairly common problem that can happen in XP for multiple reasons from software installations that messed up with the power management to simply by deleting all profiles by hand... then one cannot add one again and all options get greyed out. There are hundreds of links all over the internet on how to fix this with a simple registry tweak, which is precisely what I did and got the applet running again with all power profiles that XP comes with by default. The clock multipler problem remained however so the problem was not from there. When the battery was taken out the laptop would work at full speed but not when the battery was in.

Yesterday I went ahead and purchased a new Sony extended battery for the Z (I needed one anyway). It is a bit bigger and bulges out a bit from the bottom plus its heavier but I dont care as I alwways use my system on battery and the standard battery never had enough power. To my amazement, with the battery, the laptop now behaves properly. Switch back to the standard battery again and the laptop goes 1/2 speed again at all times. So, it is a hardware issue, somewhere, somehow in the way the battery is communicating with the laptop's internal hardware and power management. My battery is a heavily used one I should say and that is why I bought a new one... I've done well over 300+ charge/discharge cycles on it and it had started not to last as long... maybe as the battery gets older this happens... I wonder if my case is isolated or anyone else has experinced power management/SpeedStep issues on batteries that have been heavily used...

Either way, new battery on the Z, problem solved.