XP Power Management Problems

On my machine, an SZ330P, I have found that when using a limited user account (LUA) battery life is much shorter than when using an administrator account. I would expect this behavior to be the same on any SZ1, 2, 3 or 4 as they utilize the same chipset.

The Sony power management application reports that it is using settings from the administrator account when in the LUA, but fan speed settings do not work as expected, devices do not turn off when switching from AC to battery and when devices are turned off in both AC and battery modes they appear to be disabled only in software as power is observed to be on for the optical drive, for example.

I have been unable to obtain any information on this problem. Perhaps very few members of this forum use the LUA.

I would appreciate any information. If you run with administrative privileges, you might try temporarily running LUA to see if this behavior is present on your machine. Owners of other model Sony notebook computers with XP installed are requested to do this investigation as well. However, it is noted that power management does not work at all on a variety of Vaio machines that were "downgraded" to XP.

This problem does not occur with Vista when UAC is enabled. Everything in power management works as expected.

 

I have this problem on my Napa SZ as well. To get around it, you'll need to run the Power Options control panel applet with elevated administrative privileges by using the runas command with this command:

Code:

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL powercfg.cpl

You can write an encrypted vbscript with runas or use RunAs Password or CPAU to hide your admin user info.

You'll need to disable SPMgr.exe from running at start-up in the LUA and manually execute it after the Power Options applet is opened, or you can go to the Advanced options under the VAIO Power Management tab and enable it from there. Unfortunately, you'll have to do this every time you switch to a LUA, but you can probably write a script to automate all this (e.g., make sure SPMgr.exe is not running -> open the power options window -> run SPMgr.exe -> close the power options window). Note that only the Power Options applet needs to run at elevated privileges, not SPMgr.exe.

 

What this sounds like is:

1: do not let spmgr.exe start on boot.
2: Run the power applet with admininstrative priviledges.
3 Start spmgr.exe

Looks like some experimentation is in order. I wonder if starting the power applet with something like surun or makemeadmin will do it, or does it have to be started by the administrator, rather than the lua user with temporarily elevated privileges.

Thanks, because this is the first semlence of a solution that I have seen so far.

 

I finally got around to implementing and testing this.

AS I use SuRun to start programs with administrative rights in the LUA, all that was needed was to disable start up loading of spmgr.exew using autoruns, start the control panel with administrative rights, click on the Power Options icon and start spmgr.exe by clicking the Vaio Power Management tab, Advanced Options button and checking Enable Vaio Power Management.

Although this must be done with each logon, It is only needed when I anticipate using battery power.

In order to make thins easier, I made a shortcut on the desktop where the target is the code you gave below.