Thinkpads Forum

i have a problem regarding ati's powerplay. it is not saving the alts i made in preferences. even if i turn the powerplay on/off next time i check it is it turned on.

what should i do about it?

OLD POST:
I would like to refresh this topic because powerplay is a big problem. I have tried changing the settings simultaneously in the original administrator account, a second administrator account, and a limited account and the settings do not seem to stick.

For those who don't know, the powerplay settings are in: settings > control panel > display > settings tab > advanced > POWERPLAY

060216 UPDATE:
There was a suggestion that a service (ati hotkey poller) is involved problem. The hotkey poller is ati2evxx (google it). There is a corresponding post here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... =powerplay

Unfortunately disabling the service ati2evxx in the XPPro admin tools > services control panel does not solve the problem.

What disabling this process does:
1) The powerplay settings may be shown as optimal battery performance, but the ATI card is still operating in balanced or optimal performance modes (proof: the application Maple 10 experiences severe slowdown when in optimal battery POWERPLAY in a clean install, and this slowdown was not seen when ati2evxx was disabled and POWERPLAY was set to optimal battery).

2) The POWERPLAY settings no longer displays separate settings for high battery and low battery. There is just a low battery slider. There is also no field available to enter a 2 digit low battery percentage.

3) On a restart, the POWERPLAY control panel shows that the preferred setting is optimum battery, but the active setting is "optimum performance". The only way to set the displayed (but not actual) active setting to optiumum battery is to move the slider to balanced or performance, apply the settings, then slide it back to optimum battery and apply the settings again.

Because disabling the atievxx service breaks the ATI control panel and function further, I will leave it on and accept the fact that my POWERPLAY settings may change on their own. I will just have to change them to the desired setting constantly to get the desired performance.

Thanks for replying. You are the first to be aware of the problem.

And welcome to the Thinkpads forum. See that this is your first post.

I remember doing quite a research on this one. Trying many combinations of power profiles. Not even the latest IBM Ati driver resolved the issue. Frankly I don't know what else to try. I just faced this will have to remain a pain in the butt for awhile.

It is interesting though that when on battery power powerplay leaves setting toped out.

Thanks for the welcome krma-thkpds. I actually have not done enough testing for what happens on plugging and unplugging and on battery power alone (run on AC all the time). But I am sure that the behavior used to be that sometimes when I switch users the powerplay reverts to optimal battery. Now that I want optimal battery, the behavior is that on restarting the powerplay is optimal performance.

This isn't because I'm neglecting the difference between user settings, when I change user settings I change ALL of the user settings administrator, second admin, and limited the same way at one time.

For everyone, the ATI driver with the problems above is 8.082.2-041211m-019929C IBM.

On thing you could try is Microsoft's UPHClean service. It might work. I believe when Windows does not shutdown cleanly, it loads up a previous profile on the next reboot (which of course does not have your saved settings). This can apply to any program that saves profiles. At least this is what I think is going on.

I use this service myself. It also speeds up shutdown times when they are unusually long.

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

I have the thing instaled, but still have the issue. Do you know if omega drivers have anything like PowerPlay? We could try those drivers... heard a lot about them but haven't tried yet.

IBM Power Manager is to blame for changing POWERPLAY settings. The "maximize performance" and "balanced" thermal management settings controls the ATI powerplay. Specifically: changing the "plugged in" setting to optimum performance or optimum battery when the IBM Power Manager is set to maximum performance and balanced, respectively.

This is bad software design that thinkpad owners have to put up with. Especially when Windows practically requires the use of three different accounts, all of which load different power manager settings. (It is commonly accepted that no user should use their computer as administrator, and creation of a limited account can only happen after another administrator account has been created first).

Finally, use of the power manager in a limted account is buggy, not allowing the use of any setting except for the Thinkpad Default setting. Using Run As... to run the power manager as an administrator to apply custom settings causes the power manager to break and display no settings the next time it is used by the limited user.

Just in case someone comes up with a future solution, krma-thkpds, thanks for making the thread, but if you have time, would you please adjust the subject of this thread to read powerplay (instead of poweplay)? This will help other people who have this problem discuss it, and maybe someone will come up with a good solution.

redchair wrote:Just in case someone comes up with a future solution, krma-thkpds, thanks for making the thread, but if you have time, would you please adjust the subject of this thread to read powerplay (instead of poweplay)? This will help other people who have this problem discuss it, and maybe someone will come up with a good solution.

Done. In my opinion it is not up to users to fix such issues. This is certainly a software design flaw which should be fixed by Lenovo. Thanks for trying to fix this.