Couple Questions about a Reformatted e1405/640m...

Hi all,

I just received my inspiron last week and i proceeded to reformat/reinstall windows today.

everything went fine, but... when i've noticed that the battery meter, which usually rates my fully-charged 9 cell at ~7 hours is now behaving rather oddly.. it is switching back and forth between 3:49, 4:02, 4:59 etc. (with no settings changed) and it seems to be draining more quickly (percentage-wise) as well.

Did I screw something up here that is unfixable? Or is there something I can do to regain my earlier battery life estimates?

Thanks in advance,
Rod

BTW I reinstalled QuickSet and there's no difference.

 

My guess is most likely to do with the settings. First of all the battery meter is only an estimate, so it is going to flucate when you change things (i.e. screen brightness, wifi on/off, etc). Another possibility could be that your laptop is set for maximize performance instead of maximum battery. You can find these two settings in the powere management feature of Quickset or in the power options under Control Panel in XP.

 

Thanks for the info Southern Girl. The settings are not being manipulated while the battery meter continues to grossly fluctuate... also, the performance is set to "maximum battery".. yet my estimates are still nominally lower.