Thinkpads Forum

Hi folks,

I've got an X61 running XP. My issue is that the Power Manager won't let me change to a different scheme. It is currently set to Maximum Performance and when click on the battery guage to bring up the list of available schemes, they are all grayed out. If I open up Power Manager, the schemes are all there but the OK and Apply buttons are grayed out.

So, I can't change things and my poor little X61 is burning juice at a scary rate.

I'm guessing that the problem stems from the fact that I'm not an administrator on the local machine (my company doesn't like to give out admin rights). Is this the issue, or could there be other problems going on?

Can the Power Manager be installed in a mode where non-admin accounts can be given the option to change from one scheme to another?

I can get our IT staff to log on as administrator and do what I ask, but when they leave, I go back to my non-admin account.

I appreciate any assistance with this question.

Sincerely,

Marc

Turns out it was indeed the Admin rights thing.

There seems to be no way to install the software such that any non-admin can make changes.

I got my IT guy to temporarily grant me local admin rights, then I set up an Adaptive scheme that would be more battery-use friendly, and set that as the active scheme. Then mr. IT set me back to non-admin user. Sigh.

So, it's working fine from a functional point of view but it really cheeses me that Lenovo didn't provide for a way to let non-admins adjust schemes on the fly.

Marc

burn through batteries so they have to replace them more often...
get them to buy you extra batteries...


bottom line... company hardware, company policy. i've been there and done that, from both sides. it wasn't until i joined the it group that i got an admin account. at first, it seemed like we got more calls for support with a 'locked down' desktop environment, but we had far fewer catastrophic support issues, like failed bios or irrecoverable malware/virus issues. i'm sure our overall costs and user downtime were lower.