GATEWAY MX7515 Battery Issue

Ok, so i've noticed a strange thing with my gateway laptop while owning it for the last 6 months. At first i was noticing a battery life of 2 hours with minmal power settting and doing nothing. I thought at first that my video card was causing much of the drain and i really didn't do much about it. Then i decided to reformat the computer with a fresh copy of windows xp (without the junk that gateway adds). After installing all the same programs i wanted and drivers my battery life was extended to like 3 hours. Now due to the system restore thing (which i really don't like), all the manufacturer settings are back to the way they were and my battery life is 2 hours again. I have unistalled all the programs that it came with (such as antivirus, secuirty stuff, and other junk). My question is what is causing this power drain. Does anyone know of any hidden background programs that gateway computers have processing which could explain this battery issue. Any insight would be much appreciated.

 

Try updating your processor drivers. When I got my laptop, my processor stayed at 2.4ghz whether I was on AC or battery. I updated the drivers, and I'm getting decent battery life even after 1 & 1/2 years.

You would really have to push it to get 3 hours of battery life out of this. I get 2.5 hours with medium brightness and wireless on. What I'm saying is that it may say 3 hours, but actually doing things, time will be reduced.

Now, you also might check to see that you have ATI PowerPlay enabled in the graphics card properties. This will underclock the graphics card when it is not needed.

If you are looking for power-management software, I recommend Notebook Hardware Control (NHC). This will also help you determine if your processor is reducing speed.

I hope this helps

 

Yeah, it can say three hours sometimes but that can be do to the way that the battery life is calculated. The number will fluctuate. If you actually did get three hours of use on a battery then that is pretty impressive and I don't know what would cause the difference other than the AMD drivers and power settings.

 

I do understand that whatever the battery time that windows tells me is not the most accurate time and i know that usually with decent usage i should only get 2 hours of battery life. The thing is if i use the default factory settings i would get probably 1 and a half hours of battery life while a fresh copy of windows would get me 2 and a half with the same drivers and programs installed. Something tells me that there is a background program(s) that i am not aware of which is taking up the hour in battery life. I have installed the latest processor drivers but no improvment in battery life. I'll try the program you suggested to see if it will help me diagnose. Any further insight would be appreciated.

 

I tried the program, it seems everything is clocked right. the processor speed is reduced to like 800MHz and the video card is reduced to 120MHz. Powerplay settings were set to optimized battery life while on battery like before. There must be some service running in the background causing this battery usage. Is there any program out there that checks to see all services currently running on the computer.

Thanks for your input.

 

Well, I have never tried this before, but you might try this on the right.
Also run the regular (virus scan, spyware scan).

 

Hmm. This is perplexing. Could maybe a fresh copy of Windows not have the latest drivers and actually underclock your CPU all of the time. ie.. you are always below the 2.6 that the CPU is capable of? I have no idea if that is even remotely probable but it is just a thought.

 

latest processor (1.3.2.16) + windows ACPI (set up in computer properties) = give decent battery usage time
i'd personally look into turning off indexing and performance counter as well
if u r on battery, the other best thing is also not to use any external devices

cheers ...

 

I don't have any input on your specific problem but I have now had to have two Gateway laptops replaced due to battery/power issues. Both of them were the MX6750 model. Seems this is an across the board issue with Gateway computers.