Hi everyone, 
So I have a 9750 and would appreciate a little tech help with a strange power problem on my Sager 9750 and XP Pro.
Quick specs, Sager 9750, AMD 64 4800 2GB Ram Quadro FX 1400, running XP Pro x86 SP2, had the unit new since march of this year.
The problem, one day I go to power up from battery power alone. The usual boot up sequence begins, POST completes and the usual Windows progress indicator fades in and blue bit scrolls. But rather than going to the login screen, the screen switches to a screen full of | ASCII characters (the upright bars) forming lines up and down. This is strange! This remains on the screen for about 5 seconds, the screen then goes completely black and freezes. Hard drive activity has stopped when the screen goes to ASCI characters, with just an occasional flicker of activity every 4 seconds.
The problem is repeatable and always does the same thing. If the AC power is connected, XP boots just fine and the system operates perfectly (as much as a 9750 can do). Again it always works fine when plugged in.
Once running, if the AC power is disconnected, screen goes black, system freezes. Time to reboot from fresh. Won't resume with power re connected. System will Sleep and Hibernate just fine, just as long as I plug in power when waking the thing.
I have 2 batteries, so have tried every combination of charge level during attempts to boot from battery alone. Both batteries are fine and get regular (monthly discharge) cycling.
The system will run from a boot disk just fine, into something like a base level memory tester, and that's what I've been using to run the system until the battery runs out, it'll last about 1.5 hours this way before croaking.
So I guess it must be something to do with XP Pro x86, and how power is handled / drivers loaded at startup? The system detects the battery and reports charge level, everything you'd expect to see. Tried reloading all the drivers, chipset etc, with no change.
Would be a massive pain in the ass the re-install XP, as it took about a week of intense installation to get it all ready for using for 3D and graphics work. So I'd love to find a way to indentify and fix the problem.
It's not like I expect this machine to run as a work environment from batteries, and they sure only last about 45 mins when being used intensively, but it'd be nice to have the option and to be able to use the 'UPS' feature of having the battery there. As now a glitch in power just freezes the system
Any help very much appreciated
Thanks in advance guys.
Nick.
So I have a 9750 and would appreciate a little tech help with a strange power problem on my Sager 9750 and XP Pro.
Quick specs, Sager 9750, AMD 64 4800 2GB Ram Quadro FX 1400, running XP Pro x86 SP2, had the unit new since march of this year.
The problem, one day I go to power up from battery power alone. The usual boot up sequence begins, POST completes and the usual Windows progress indicator fades in and blue bit scrolls. But rather than going to the login screen, the screen switches to a screen full of | ASCII characters (the upright bars) forming lines up and down. This is strange! This remains on the screen for about 5 seconds, the screen then goes completely black and freezes. Hard drive activity has stopped when the screen goes to ASCI characters, with just an occasional flicker of activity every 4 seconds.
The problem is repeatable and always does the same thing. If the AC power is connected, XP boots just fine and the system operates perfectly (as much as a 9750 can do). Again it always works fine when plugged in.
Once running, if the AC power is disconnected, screen goes black, system freezes. Time to reboot from fresh. Won't resume with power re connected. System will Sleep and Hibernate just fine, just as long as I plug in power when waking the thing.
I have 2 batteries, so have tried every combination of charge level during attempts to boot from battery alone. Both batteries are fine and get regular (monthly discharge) cycling.
The system will run from a boot disk just fine, into something like a base level memory tester, and that's what I've been using to run the system until the battery runs out, it'll last about 1.5 hours this way before croaking.
So I guess it must be something to do with XP Pro x86, and how power is handled / drivers loaded at startup? The system detects the battery and reports charge level, everything you'd expect to see. Tried reloading all the drivers, chipset etc, with no change.
Would be a massive pain in the ass the re-install XP, as it took about a week of intense installation to get it all ready for using for 3D and graphics work. So I'd love to find a way to indentify and fix the problem.
It's not like I expect this machine to run as a work environment from batteries, and they sure only last about 45 mins when being used intensively, but it'd be nice to have the option and to be able to use the 'UPS' feature of having the battery there. As now a glitch in power just freezes the system
Any help very much appreciated
Thanks in advance guys.
Nick.
