System : Acer Aspire 3613WLMi
1.5GHz Celerom M processor
2GB DDR2 RAM (recently upgraded from 512MB)
40GB HD
I have been having battery problems with my laptop for almost a year now (since before the memory upgrade I mentioned). Basically the computer does detect that there is a battery, but displays its charge as unknown. The battery does work though, I can use my computer without AC power, I just don't know when it's going to cut out, and I have to turn off any kind of 'auto-hibernate' modes, as it will hibernate as soon as I unplug the AC. I don't think it always charges properly though, as while I sometimes get about 1.5 - 3 hours of life from the battery, sometimes I get less than 10 minutes.
I can't remember what changes I had made before the problem started as it was a while before I noticed it, and had never been able to work out what was causing it. It's not the battery itself as the same problems exist if I use a different battery.
In the last few months though I have noticed a new factor to the problem. Sometimes everything is working OK and I get proper battery detection (and this is usually accompanied by a proper battery life). I installed Auslogics Boostspeed to help me identify the cause whenever my computer is running slow and discovered that sometimes the programme epm-dm.exe is placing a very high load on my CPU (50-80%, I can be running software such as Photoshop and still find that it is epm-dm that is gobbling up most of my CPU speed). Whether or not epm-dm is going to be like this seems to be decided on start-up and it remains in the same state for the rest of that session.
epm-dm.exe is part of Acer's e-Power Management suite, which is the proprietary way to set power settings on Acer PCs. I have noticed that it using too much of my CPU coincides with my battery problems; and if epm-dm is normal then so is my battery.
I haven't been able to work out how to address this though. I tried upgrading to the latest version of epm-dm and this didn't work, and I tried preventing it from starting up with my system and all this does is guarantee that I will have battery problems. I'm all out of ideas.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry this post is so long :S
1.5GHz Celerom M processor
2GB DDR2 RAM (recently upgraded from 512MB)
40GB HD
I have been having battery problems with my laptop for almost a year now (since before the memory upgrade I mentioned). Basically the computer does detect that there is a battery, but displays its charge as unknown. The battery does work though, I can use my computer without AC power, I just don't know when it's going to cut out, and I have to turn off any kind of 'auto-hibernate' modes, as it will hibernate as soon as I unplug the AC. I don't think it always charges properly though, as while I sometimes get about 1.5 - 3 hours of life from the battery, sometimes I get less than 10 minutes.
I can't remember what changes I had made before the problem started as it was a while before I noticed it, and had never been able to work out what was causing it. It's not the battery itself as the same problems exist if I use a different battery.
In the last few months though I have noticed a new factor to the problem. Sometimes everything is working OK and I get proper battery detection (and this is usually accompanied by a proper battery life). I installed Auslogics Boostspeed to help me identify the cause whenever my computer is running slow and discovered that sometimes the programme epm-dm.exe is placing a very high load on my CPU (50-80%, I can be running software such as Photoshop and still find that it is epm-dm that is gobbling up most of my CPU speed). Whether or not epm-dm is going to be like this seems to be decided on start-up and it remains in the same state for the rest of that session.
epm-dm.exe is part of Acer's e-Power Management suite, which is the proprietary way to set power settings on Acer PCs. I have noticed that it using too much of my CPU coincides with my battery problems; and if epm-dm is normal then so is my battery.
I haven't been able to work out how to address this though. I tried upgrading to the latest version of epm-dm and this didn't work, and I tried preventing it from starting up with my system and all this does is guarantee that I will have battery problems. I'm all out of ideas.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry this post is so long :S
