Thinkpads Forum

My T61p gets incredibly slow and prone to freezing when it is unplugged from a power source. It doesn't seem right that a laptop should become unusable when it isn't plugged in. Any movement at all causes it to lock up or freeze, sometimes resulting in having to remove the battery from the laptop. Is this a common problem? A fixable problem? It's getting more than slightly annoying now.

It is not a T61p trait or problem in general. I inadvertenly didn't plug my T61 in after I moved it one evening, and I didn't even know until the battery alarm kicked in. You could check your power settings, but I don't think that will come up with anything. ... JDH

my wife's T43 - although it's a better configuration than my Frankenpad it runs much slower on battery than my machine... and it freezes, even doesn't "want" to open some applications...

after some "digging" i've found out that the power management in Win Xp combined with improper bios settings are the culprits:
when not plugged in it runs at maximum 600mhz - no matter what profile i select ... and even on ac power doesnt get higher than 900...
my primary suspect is a very battery efficient speedstep setting in bios - i cannot enter the bios because in a job machine, with (of course) password - but i can "simulate" the same settings on my TR451 - and i can make it runs equally crappy...

so check the bios - even set everything there on max. performance - and let a program like NHC manage the processor speed - sometrhnig like "adaptive"
my Thinkpad is set like this and it works excellent, with a battery life of about 2,5hrs

good luck

When you move your Thinkpad (with or without power cord attached) and you system seems to stall/lock up temporarily, then it may be the workings of the Thinkvantage Active Protection System (it's a feature, not a bug). However that would not account for complete system freezes.