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    CPU slow down (correlated to battery not charging)

    Discussion in 'Alienware M11x' started by onspeed, Feb 20, 2013.

  1. onspeed

    onspeed Notebook Guru

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    Core i5 m11xr2, about 2 years old now. Battery is a little more than a year old, but not doing too great, holds charge for ~2-2.5 hours, just internet browsing and word processing. When I have the laptop connected to an outlet, it doesn't always charge the battery. This seems to be happening a lot more often lately. When the battery is drained and plugged in but not charging, the CPU seems to underclock itself. In the high performance power plan, I have minimum CPU state set to 100%, yet I see the CPU frequency hover around 60-70% when plugged in + not charging, based on the Resource Monitor in Windows. When it's on battery (same settings) or the battery IS charging, it'll go to 100% or more. So I guess the question is, why does the battery not charge sometimes? Software issue or hardware? And is there a prevent it from underclocking? I assume it's some sort of protection feature?
     
    onspeed, Feb 20, 2013
    #1
  2. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    You need throttle stop to make that work better. Also the battery not charging could be caused by an outdated BIOS, try flashing to the latest one available at DELL.com and if that does not work you should consider replacing the battery.
     
    Alienware-L_Porras, Feb 21, 2013
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  3. Tedster59

    Tedster59 Notebook Consultant

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    your problem seems to be your charger is damaged. This happened to my M11x, and it is related to the signal pin that tells the laptop what power charger is connected to the laptop. This happened to my original charger. The laptop can not determine the amount of power the charger is capable of delivering, so runs in low power mode. When it detects properly, your battery charges and it runs at full power. if you enable the "detect unsupported chargers" option in BIOS, it will give you a prompt on boot up.

    The fix for this is a new charger.
     
    Tedster59, Feb 24, 2013
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  4. onspeed

    onspeed Notebook Guru

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    Yeah I actually figured that out reading someone's post on the ThrottleStop thread.

    I downloaded ThrottleStop and it seems like I can force the CPU to always run at max speed and override the underclocking feature.

    Now I've got a problem with the vid card. Gives BSOD after playing a game for ~10 minutes. Need to try a different game to see if it's hardware or software issue.
     
    onspeed, Feb 27, 2013
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  5. Tedster59

    Tedster59 Notebook Consultant

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    Pretty certain it was my post (as it was not too long ago).

    I'd recommend updating your GPU drivers.
     
    Tedster59, Feb 27, 2013
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