t42 howto Fan Control in NHC, POWERPLAY AC plugged, Cat 6.11

[Soulcatcher]

Ok, i just decided to recap everything that i found out for the last 2 days dealing with these problems

Special thanks for troubadix. Seriously, you are awesome

Problem: t42 (with mobility radeon 7500) is always plugged in => POWERPLAY is disabled, fan is always on (very annoying), NHC can't control fan and it also conflicts with ThinkPad Fan Control program. Also latest Catalyst 6.11 driver for radeon 7500 comes with dreaded CCC which is slow, eats RAM, requires .NET (which is not a big problem) and, at least on my laptop, CLI.exe (which is part of CCC) was taking 80% of my CPU every 2-3 seconds. Also, i couldnt underclock GPU in any substantial way - every time i tried to set clocks, say, 30-40% lower XP was hanging. I think the only stable underclock was from 260/180 to 240/160 which didnt do anything. Compare it to POWERPLAY, which reduces to 66/66 and also undervolts GPU.

To make it short: I want to use latest Catalyst available (6.11) with old Control Panel with enabled POWERPLAY when plugged in and i want NHC to undervolt my CPU and control my fan speeds to fix fan always on problem

Solution:
1) Goto DriverHeaven and install Mobility Modder tool: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

2) Goto www.ati.com and download latest desktop driver for radeon 7500 (assuming that your laptop has 7500; if something else download corresponding driver - but i'm not sure that you dont have POWERPLAY when plugged in on newer models).

3) Now you need old Control Panel. The last Catalyst to have Control Panel was Catalyst 5.11. Get it from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/95/mirrors.php

4)Execute downloaded driver. It will extract everything to c:\ati\support\blah and it will ask you to start driver installation - click cancel.

5) Run Mobility Modder tool, point it to c:\ati\support\blah and click on Modify. It will take some time (took 30 secs in my case).

6) Since we want to install driver only, go to c:\ati\support\blah\Driver folder and run setup.exe there. This will install driver only. Reboot if you want.

7) Now install Control Panel. Reboot.

Now to enable POWERPLAY (thanks to troubadix):
-Open Regedit (Start->Run-> type regedit, enter)
- Locate
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Video]

You will see bunch of folders. Each folder will have 0000 folder. Most of 0000 folders will have the following keys:

"DALRULE_USEOLDPOWERPLAYINTERFACE"=0
"DALRULE_USEOLDPOWERPLAYPROPERTYPAGE"=0
"DALRULE_ENABLESHOWACSLIDER"=1
"DALRULE_ENABLESHOWDCLOWSLIDER"=1"

Make sure that in all 0000 folders that have these keys you have the same values as above
-I think you need to restart. After restart you will be able to enable POWERPLAY in Control Panel.

Fan control in NHC:

1) Now install NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) http://www.pbus-167.com/
This is very, very useful proggie for any laptop.

2) Download ACPI scripts for NHC (thanks to troubadix) - http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/nhc_tpfc.zip.
-Extract it to acpi folder inside your NHC installation folder (say, c:\program files\notebook hardware control\acpi
-Goto NHC, click on Info Tab and click on "Show Computer Hardware details" and look at Model field - write it down.
-Shut down NHC.
-Open ibm.xml in acpi folder (c:\program files\notebook hardware control\acpi\ibm.xml) and replace
Model name="model name to replace"
with your model that you wrote down before.
-Instructions say also to edit lenovo.xml in the same way. Not sure if you have to do it for t4x, but i did it anyway.
Update:No, didn't have to do it for other t41 laptop that i have.
-Now start NHC again, goto ACPI tab and configure it the way you like it

That's it. I hope i didn't miss anything.

[Keithj]

Many thanks for that! The fan in my T43 isn't too obtrusive, but NHC is a very useful application. I've been using Everest to keep tabs on what's happening (it's a very useful package), but the little temperature icon in the taskbar is much more convenient.

[hki]

Thanks a lot for this guide. The tips on Powerplay were especially useful. I had TPfancontrol working as service alongside NHC, but with the ACPI scripts I was able to eliminate TPfancontrol. One less program running is always good IMHO. So thanks again. These kinds of tips are the reason why I keep an eye on this forum. Cheers!

PS. Maybe this post should be stickied?

[venik]

II have followed these detailed instructions, since my T43p is often overheating, even though I have NHC running.When I go to the ACPI tab, I find that the message: "ACPI not yet configurated for this system" is still there, just as it was before I downloaded and unzipped those scripts. It seems thatt there is something else I have to do-- what is it?
------------------
Found the problem: I left a # in front of the model number.

[Johan]

II have followed these detailed instructions, since my T43p is often overheating, even though I have NHC running.When I go to the ACPI tab, I find that the message: "ACPI not yet configurated for this system" is still there, just as it was before I downloaded and unzipped those scripts. It seems thatt there is something else I have to do-- what is it?

I suggest you see the post of Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:46 am in the thread NHC 2 is out! and carefully follow the steps outlined there - that ought to work!

Johan

[dozer]

hi folks,

I simply cannot get past the problem of "acpi system not configurated"....sigh...

I've just got done following all the threads mentioned by Johan and others; as well as looking through 10+ pages at the NHC forum...

I've also done a search here for the 'and' of "nhc configurated".

And haven't found an answer yet.

I'm running Windows 2000 on a 2623-DDU T60p.

I installed the 'NHC_2.0_pre_release_06.zip', as well as unzipping 'nhc_tpfc.zip' into the acpi files.

I checked the 'info' pane in NHC, and it comes up with 'lenovo' and '2623DDU'. I edited both the IBM and Lenovo xml files to put that number inside the quotes.

nada....no go......NHC starts and runs fine, no errors.....but it simply will not 'configurate' ... the acpi.

In following the various threads, I saw this same problem reported by several others; and I even saw a couple of them report back 'got it working', but none of them said HOW exactly they got it working!

I'd be very grateful for a complete answer on what might be causing this problem.

ps; I noticed that those zipped .cs files don't contain even a single thinkpad model#. Is it that right? Am I supposed to edit the .cs files as well in some way?

I've been using TPFancontrol .41 for a year; but it has an odd bug, where it continually increases in memory-usage. Starts out at 800K, and just keeps blipping upwards every couple seconds. If I leave it for a couple hours, I'll find that it's up to 50,000K !

I've also been using RMClock, but it has a bug also, in that it loses track of the CPU temp. Right after booting fresh, its temp will agree with TPFC, but after a while, I'll notice that its suddenly reading about 10-deg C higher than TPFC; and a program-restart doesn't fix it.

ps; with either RM or NHC, I'm not clear as to whether I should be disabling Intel Speedstep. That is, via the tooltray icon that appears after installing standard lenovo drivers.

thanks much!

Richard

[Johan]

While I don't have a T60 with NHC installed right at hand, I will try help with reference to how NHC is installed on my T42 (2373-N1U):

First, I guess that you have already read Enable fine-grained fan control with NHC on Thinkpads specificly discussing NHC on a T60 (a 2623-D3U). Did you modify "IBM.cs" according to that description? Also, the thread New to NHC, please, some clarifications may also be of use.

NB: That blog is a little bit inconsistent, I believe, becourse if you view the image immediately below "If you click Show ACPI Control System details, it should look something like this:" then it says "Manufacturer = lenovo" and "File = lenovo.cs" (why not "ibm.cs"?) - this doesn't quite match with the explanation?

My T42 here has lines 41-43 in the "IBM.cs" looking like this:

Code: Select all

    #region Computer model : class T42
    //
    public static class T42

My "ibm.xml" looks like this (the complete file):

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<IBM>
  <Model name="2373N1U" location="SYSTEM" class="T42" file="IBM.cs" />
</IBM>

Both files reside in the directory: C:\Programs\Notebook Hardware Control\acpi

NHC should work under Windows 2000, but require Microsoft .NET ver. 2, according to Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) - Homepage. I hope the above may get your ACPI up and running...

Johan

[dozer]

hello Johan, and thanks for the suggestions.

As I mentioned, I did indeed edit both XML files to replace the '###' with my model# as it appears in NHC's 'info' pane.

In the first thread you ref'ed, it says:

Also try and edit the ibm.cs file to say "r40" instead of "T43P" in 2 places.

However, the ibm.cs and lenovo.cs files in the zip do NOT contain any such instances of an IBM model# like 'T43'.

So I assumed that the .cs file he referred to in that thread must've been an older one; prior to the "TPFancontrol class" version that comes in the nhc_tpfc.zip.

The 2nd thread you ref'ed speaks of a 'T43.zip' file. That is not the file 'currently' being recommended in all the later threads I've seen. All later threads say to download nhc_tpfc.zip and unpack it into the acpi folder, then edit the xml's. Nowhere have I seen anything suggesting that the .cs files need to be edited.

Are you saying that the .cs files DO need to be edited in some way?

thanks again,

Richard

[dozer]

Anyone else go through this; and find the solution?

Something win2000 specific perhaps?

thanks

[Johan]

Richard:

I can't quite figure our what your problem is, but if you are interested let me have your e-mail address (e.g. via PM or e-mail: johan_granholm [at] yahoo [dot] dk), and I will ZIP and send my NHC-installation; that is all the files in my directory "C:\Programs\Notebook Hardware Control" (about 2.6 MB). With those files, you may try see if you can get "my" installation to work in your T60 by modifying the appropriate files.

Johan

[dozer]

hi Johan,

Thanks much for your very kind offer.

I've just sent an email to the address you gave above.

Richard