Naralas
December 19th, 2006, 04:39 AM
I reformatted a friends XP Laptop after failing to get her wireless to work with Ubuntu and NDISWrapper (mostly cuz I am a noob, because I have heard success stories of people with the same laptop and same card) but now that I installed my own XP Service Pack 2 she claims that she gets a little over an hour from her battery as opposed to three hours. I asked her if she had actually RAN it three hours or the box just said three hours, and she says she had run it for a full three hours before.
So I feel like a total ****, she loves using her laptop on-the-go and now she can't so much because of me. I guess if we actually use HER restore CD's next format then it might make a difference, but I don't know why.
I went through the usual suspects, told her AVG Antivirus can sometimes keep the harddrive spinning and also takes some processor power, so that would be a bit of a drain. She definetly keeps her display brighter now that she knows how to do that so I guess thats probably a factor but she wouldn't believe me if I told her she used to keep it low. And I also blamed the wireless connection, but it isnt turned off by software, it has a physical switch on the outside and she tells me that even when her wireless is off her laptop only lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes.
So how can I get her battery life up? I guess a new account with no AVG would be an OKAY first step, perhaps a background image that doesn't make her want to turn up the display. Is this enough to really get back an hour and 40 minutes though? I have my doubts. Any suggestions? Or should I re-install with her factory disks? Could there be some reason I just don't get why it works better with her battery?
So I feel like a total ****, she loves using her laptop on-the-go and now she can't so much because of me. I guess if we actually use HER restore CD's next format then it might make a difference, but I don't know why.
I went through the usual suspects, told her AVG Antivirus can sometimes keep the harddrive spinning and also takes some processor power, so that would be a bit of a drain. She definetly keeps her display brighter now that she knows how to do that so I guess thats probably a factor but she wouldn't believe me if I told her she used to keep it low. And I also blamed the wireless connection, but it isnt turned off by software, it has a physical switch on the outside and she tells me that even when her wireless is off her laptop only lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes.
So how can I get her battery life up? I guess a new account with no AVG would be an OKAY first step, perhaps a background image that doesn't make her want to turn up the display. Is this enough to really get back an hour and 40 minutes though? I have my doubts. Any suggestions? Or should I re-install with her factory disks? Could there be some reason I just don't get why it works better with her battery?