Pentium-M Problem

[ItsPat]

My laptops CPU won't throttle down any lower then 600 mhz, which is hurting my battery life pretty bad. For the first month or so it would throttle way down but now CPU-Z is showing its running at high speeds. It's a Panasonic Toughbook W2. Any ideas on what I could do to check what the problem is?

Update: Was googling trying to see if I could figure out the problem, found this article Link. Looks like there is a bug that makes it read the wrong speed sometimes. Lowest speed the processor throttles down to is 600mhz.

 

[dnuggett]

How much battery life are you getting/expecting under normal usage?

 

[JBT]

The lowest I have ever heard a Pentium M throttle down to is 597mhz thats the lowest mine goes and the lowest I have heard anyone elses go. How low was yours going before?

BTW mine is a 1.3Ghz chip

 

[ItsPat]

Mine was throttling down to 14 mhz at idle before. I'm getting about 4 hours of battery life compared to 6 or 7 when I first got it.

 

[JBT]

14mhz!!!??? :Q hmm I would have to doubt that. I'm pretty sure all of them only go as low as 597mhz. As far as the battery is concerned not surewhy it would change that much. Most Pentium M setups ussually get about 4 hours on a single battery.

 

[ItsPat]

Originally posted by: JBTele
14mhz!!!??? :Q hmm I would have to doubt that. I'm pretty sure all of them only go as low as 597mhz. As far as the battery is concerned not surewhy it would change that much. Most Pentium M setups ussually get about 4 hours on a single battery.

This guy was getting the same speed as me.
Linky So they definatelly go lower then 597, mine use to average about 394 browing the internet and little things like that, but seems to only run at 597 then jumps to 897 then throttles down to 597 again. Definatelly takes a good hour off the battery life.

 

[FishTankX]

Try and see how low it throttles when it's unplugged.

I bet it throttles down less far when it's plugged into the jack. No reason to conserve power if you're running AC, right?

 

[ItsPat]

Thats what I thought it would do, throttle down more when it's not plugged in but thats not the case. Its the same when its plugged in and when its on the battery. I'd like to reformat and see if maybe it was something I installed but they didn't send any of the drivers with the computer, and can't find them on the site either.

 

[Duvie]

I only get 597mhz on my centrino 1.5ghz but I get like 5hours battery life....

Did you change the power saving setup in control panel---power options??? What do you have listed???

 

[ItsPat]

It's set to Portable/Laptop, pretty sure I didn't touch it.

 

[FishTankX]

Do you have some sort of restore disc?

If so you might try backing up then reverting to the restored image.

 

[ItsPat]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
Do you have some sort of restore disc?

If so you might try backing up then reverting to the restored image.

All they gave me was a Win Xp Pro disc. I'll give Panasonic a call and see if they can send me one.