Disappearing battery meter

[yak]

It definitely worked in XP and I'm quite sure it did in Vista but under 7 whenever I restart the explorer.exe task, the battery meter (gauge) is gone and won't reappear.

The simplest solution is to reboot, a logout could also be sufficient.

Here's what I do to get it back without closing all the apps. There are two tasks that have to be killed in the task manager. One is the PWMUIAux.exe, the other is rundll32.exe. The second is a bit tricky as there may be more than one running. To find out which to kill, the command line column has to be enabled in View/Select Columns. The one we're looking for has this in it:

rundll32 C:\PROGRA~1\ThinkPad\UTILIT~1\PWMTR32V.DLL,PwrMgrBkGndMonitor

After killing them both, the rundll32.exe has to be restarted. The exact command line is what you see above.

To make the whole thing automatic, I wrote a short batch file:

Code: Select all

taskkill /f /im pwmuiaux.exe
taskkill /f /fi "modules eq pwmtr32v.dll"
start /b rundll32 C:\PROGRA~1\ThinkPad\UTILIT~1\PWMTR32V.DLL,PwrMgrBkGndMonitor

This kills both tasks and restarts the rundll in background.

Note that it takes a couple of seconds for the battery meter to reappear after this. It will appear as soon as the rundll restarts the PWMUIAux.

Please let me know if this problem is specific to my system only. In particular tell me if the meter reappears if you go to the task manager, kill the explorer.exe task and restart it by extering explorer.exe in File/New Task dialog. Thanks.

[Harryc]

..and why are you restarting the explorer.exe task? I'm sure we could find lots of tasks that once restarted, deleted, or killed will effect other tasks and processes. I don't see the point.

[yak]

Well, I said I restart it but the truth is that it crashes.

Here's what happens. I come back home and connect the T60 to my external monitor, I usually switch to external-monitor-only mode but some time later I decide to turn on the laptop screen too to enhance my desktop. At this point the desktop sometimes stops being responsive and I get a message box saying that explorer.exe has crashed. If I choose the option to look for resolution to the problem and restart the program everything comes back to normal except... the battery meter is gone.

I'm still tracking this problem and trying to find the cause for this. I know you guys can't assist me with this problem at this point since I don't have enough info about the exact conditions this happens in.

This thread was supposed to be about the meter only because I'm almost 100% sure it did reappear in previous versions of Windows if anything happened to explorer.exe task.

Of course, if anyone can say anything about the crashing explorer.exe at this point, it will be more than welcome. Thanks.