9860 Slowdown

power is certainly something that could cause it. My system slowed down after I installed SP2. Things that usually slow a system are:

1) Firewall, especially ones with system security (aka Sandboxing) when you launch programs they run checksums on the application and this slows the launch some.

2) DEP the windows version of sandboxing, new with SP2. It can be turned off by editing the Boot.ini file to read multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=AlwaysOff

3) Indexing service...this is an unessential service and can be turned off in Contorl panel->admin tools-> services->[new window] right click indexing service and edit the properties to disable

4) any spyware adware or EVEN some spyware resident protection programs (those that run all the time) have to decide for yourself the risk in turning them off, if you do run a third party browser...firefox or opera.

5) Backround apps...I goto Run-> MSCONFIG and turn off what I know I don't want, make sure you know what it does though. I disable CTFMON, nerocheck, java update, stuff like that. anything that auto checks for updates I normally get rid of but I manually update everyhting all the time. I also recomend turning off automatic updates , but make sure you check for updates regularly.

I'm sure there is more, a brilliant tweaking guide can be found at http://windowsxp.homedns.org/xp/asp/twg/twg.asp that I have used. It has a lot of speedups and they are done manually so you learn how to regedit like a pro, and best of all it's free.

hope this helps, although you may have to RMA it if it is a power or other issue.

I'm having the same problem exactly.

I even reinstalled XP to see if that would fix it. Nothing.

I ended up calling Sager Tech Support and got an updated SATA driver which seemed to help a little bit. Unfortunately it's been a month, and it's slowing down/freezing up temporarily still.

Call Sager support and let them know.

I heard that one guy had to RMA his notebook because it was a faulty memory controller on the MB.

I'm seeing the same kind of thing here. It gets back up to speed after several minutes or so, but it's pretty dang slow after I close a game.

You guys should try the free process explorer from sysinternals. I am using it as a task manager replacement, it works great... you can drill into every process, and I found that inside my explorer process I once had an add-in gone awry (was run as a dll, so it was cloaked in regular task mgr)

link?

http://www.sysinternals.com/

while your there check out the blue screen screensaver...it's really good/funny....
lots of other cool apps too, good resource.

i have experienced the sluggish effect when i unplug the power cord and run off the battery. it seems the entire system is sluggish and does not seem right. the cpu down clocks to 2.9 ghz from 3.6 when i unplug the cord, and i cannot use the system for anything expcept some web browsing light tasks. when i plug the power back in the sluggish goes away.

this does not seem normal, and looks like a hardware issue more than a software one. maybe the bios needs an update. i have not experienced the sluggish effect if the computer is hooked up to the ac adapter, though.

a quick way of identifying the if you the 9860 is experiencing the sluggish effect would be to simply open up an ie web browser and use the scroll feature on the touch pad. if the scroll feature acts abnormal (sluggish) then you know not to run any major programs. i mean, doom3 took like 5 minutes to load when it usually takes 30 seconds or less.

Check your BIOS versions, it could be an IDE slowdown.

Slowdowns are usually a driver vs BIOS affect, all maybe good when you 1st install the system, however, add more USB / PCMCIA devices etc. and the system will slow down if the effective North / South bridges can't react properly.

Just a thought . . .

Jason.

Notebook computers by design underclock to preserve batter life...it actually is normal. If you do a google search for "underclocking laptop" a few good articles should come up.

there aree a couple other threads adressing this problem around. its a problem where clevo decided what is better for us, batt life or power. i think it has also to do with the fact that it could kill your batt very fast - there was something about it also in ome thread. end of story, you cant change it and it is annoying, but you purchased a dtr with a build in glorified ups. the term laptop isnt really correct, since it is a transportable system at best - at least as long as you need halfway decent processing power. i still use my trusty old ibm x40 when i need a "real" laptop.

yeah i did the research and understand now. it is basically that the battery cannot supply enough power to run the laptop for more than 10 minutes so clevo decided to downclock the entire system to keep at least an hours worth of battery life, although the system is un-usable for except some web surfing and word processing tasks. so yeah, the battery is basically a UPS to help you save your work in case the power fails.

maybe this problem can be corrected in the next version of the 9860......because i don't understand why the entire system has to be downclocked so severly. can't they just downclock the cpu and gpu but keep the ram and hard drives running normally? i mean, my 17" toshiba could run on full speed at 2.4 ghz and still hold one hours worth of charge.

i think the sagers that have the 2 hard drives suffer more from this problem, though.