BSOD booting with NHC and powerplay on batteries. Common ?

[FTC]

Hi, I can consistently reproduce in my T42 a BSOD (blue screen crash) in AT2DVAG when booting on battery power if powerplay is enabled at the time NHC is loading. I have latest BIOS, Display drivers (as per Lenovo sys update) and NHC (2.0 prerelease 6) running XP+SP2 w/all published updates.

I'd like to know if this is a common error in order to report it. Anyone with the same configuration would mind to make the test ? basically :
- Activate power play
- Disconnect power
- Reboot and wait to the point NHC loads. see if you get a BSOD.

(then a normal boot with AC allows for a good startup)

[amdaman]

mine did this too. Just disable the powerplay all together, use ATI tool instead.

[Johan]

First, please explain where PowerPlay is enabled, when you experience this BSOD: 1) in NHC or 2) In the PowerPlay tab in "Advanced Properties" in the Win XP Display section?

I can't comment whether or not what you see is a general error, and I also don't know if it is influenced by NHC or not, but as mentioned in the thread ATI2DVAG BSOD Fixed (was "Need Old ATI Drivers") I recently updated the display drivers on a T42p (w/the ATI FireGL T2 GPU) using Lenovo's "System Update", and as mentioned this resulted in BSOD's with the AT2DVAG message. After rolling back to a previous Win XP System Restore point, my system has run stable. On that T42p I run, and always ran, NHC (2.0 prerelease 6), but I didn't play with enabling/disabling PowerPlay in NHC during the BSOD period (it was enabled in NHC when I experienced the BSOD's), so unfortunately I cannot comment its influence. I always ran (solely) off the mains.

Note the fix mentioned in the above post of Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:20 am in the above thread (I haven't tried it).

PS: What was very annoying: In my above AT2DVAG-BSOD period, I was - for the first time ever! - able to allow PowerPlay to be enabled in NHC (as discussed in this post), and with a nice lower GPU temperature as a result as compared to today, where NHC still won't allow PowerPlay to be enabled ("inside NHC")... I did not try to disable PowerPlay in NHC before rolling back to my Restore Point - maybe that would have fixed the BSOD for me...

Hope you get this BSOD fixed - please keep us posted about the cause, if you manage to find out what the explanation is? I would love to become able to have PowerPlay enabled in NHC again!

Best regards,

Johan

[FTC]

Hi,

It does not matter where powerplay is enabled, if you enable it through NHC or through the display driver, then if you disconnect AC power AND try to load NHC (does not really matter if system is booting), then the NHC load operation causes the BSOD. I've also reproduced it in my other T40, which works with real catalyst drivers. .. so I guess it is a generic error. I'll post if I can find a solution or workaround.. I've not tried changing the PCI-AGP controller to the standard PCI-PCI bridge yet..

[amdaman]

Powerplay is buggy at best and more so with HNC as you've found out.

Use ATI tool to lower the clocks.

I have my clock at 200/200 for normal use and it automatically switches to 405/350 for 3d.

It increases battery life substantially.

[FTC]

Hi,

I know this thread is old but today by chance I found a solution to this problem which does not require uninstalling NHC to be able to use powerplay. I am posting it here for if someone is experiencing the same problem.

Well, it looks like the BSOD happens if 'enable ATI clock control #1' or #2 is being used in NHC to force a given clock speed when powerplay is active (either through NHC or ATI driver). Just not using clock conrol avoids the traps.