No power schemes in Battery MaxiMiser

[Mofongo]

I have seen this problem reported once before along with a possible fix, but the fix did not work for me. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this:

About a month or so ago, I suddenly noticed that the Battery MaxiMiser only had 2 power schemes: "Super Power Saver" and "Presentation (with Projector)". There are no other pre-defined schemes. When I try "View Scheme Settings" and try and create new schemes, it let's me define a new scheme and give it a name and description and everything, then I click the "Save" button and it does not save it. This is when I am logged in as a user (but with Administrator priviledges).

Interestingly, if I log in as Administrator, there are many more pre-defined schemes and I am able to create new schemes just fine....just the way it used to work for me as a regular user before, but I am not sure what I did to make it stop working.

The fix that was suggested was to (as Administrator) uninstall Battery MaxiMiser, reboot, then reinstall. I tried this and it does not solve the problem. I even tried uninstalling that plus the IBM Power Management drivers and then re-installing both (as Administrator) to no avail. Just for kicks, I tried uninstalling then installing as a user, but still no luck.

Any other suggestions? This is just weird.

Thanks!

Mofongo

[Mofongo]

With help from byron (thanks byron!), I have managed to solve the problem.

Both Windows and Battery MaxiMiser save power schemes in the registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USERS/Control Panel/PowerCfg/PowerPolicies. A symptom of the problem seems to be and enormous (>80!) number of entries in PowerPolicies. How they all get there, who knows.

DISCLAIMER: The fix involved using the Windows Registry editor. This can be dangerous and permanently mess up your system if you do not know what you are doing. Only follow this fix if you are comfortable using regedit.

In this fix, the assumption is that Battery MaxiMiser does not work (in the manner of the above post) for one or more users, but does work fine for Administrator. The fix is to copy the PowerPolicies registry entries (where the power schemes are stored) of Administrator into the registry the affected userid. The fix is as follows:
- Login as Administrator
- Verify that the Battery MaxiMiser schemes work as they should for Administrator
- Open regedit
- Open HKEY_CURRENT_USERS/Control Panel/PowerCfg/PowerPolicies
- There should be of order a dozen (give or take a few) entries here...more if Administrator has been adding custom schemes, but hopefully far fewer than 80. I had 0-9, 11, 68, and 85.
- Right-click on PowerPolicies and select "export"
- Export as a .reg file. Name the file something sensible (e.g. "PowerPolicies.Admin.reg") and put it somewhere that is accessable when logged in as the problem userid.
- Logout Adminstrator and login as the user that is affected.
- Open regedit
- Open HKEY_CURRENT_USERS/Control Panel/PowerCfg/PowerPolicies
- Right-click on PowerPolicies and select "export"
- Save this to another file. IMPORTANT: This file will be the backup copy of the PowerPolicies if something goes wrong.
- Take a deep breath and right-click on PowerPolicies and select "delete"
- Close regedit.
- Double-click on the exported file from Administrator's registry (e.g. "PowerPolicies.Admin.reg"). This will load the values for PowerPolicies that you exported from Administrator into the current user's registry.
- Reopen regedit and verify the imported PowerPolicies entries.
- Close regedit and reboot. *do not click on Battery MaxiMiser* before rebooting
- After reboot, Battery MaxiMiser schemes should work for you again!

I am not sure if you need to reboot immediately after importing the new registry values, but it does not hurt and it doing things this way worked for me.

Hope this helps somebody else out there!

Mofongo