My laptop has more processing power when not plugged to the wall

[ihoss.com]

This is really strange. I tried to watch an HD movie just now, but it kept lagging, and just would not work. The audio played, but the picture was frozen. But when I pull the power cord, it plays perfectly. The moment I put the power cord back in, it starts to lag again. Unfortunately my battery sucks, so I can't watch a movie without the power cord.

Anyone else experienced something similar? Know of a solution?

[jAQUAN]

Odd, I actually get a touch faster internet with the power cord attached.

[jasonsplace]

It could be something to do with your Power profiles. In Windows at least you can set different settings for when you're plugged in and unplugged. A co-worker of mine was experiencing this problem and checked. He had it in Power Saver mode when it was plugged in and High Performance mode when it was unplugged.

[jAQUAN]

Check out the big brain on Brad.

[ihoss.com]

I have xp, so no power saver or high performance mode.

[jasonsplace]

XP still has power settings available in the Control Panel. You may want to take a look.

[ihoss.com]

It seems like cpu usage drops when I pull out the power, like something is using the processor only when the power cord is in. The CPU usage is somewhere between 48% and 65% when the power is connected. When I pull it, It drops to 15% to 29%. And it is Firefox and Azureus who take up most processing power. When the power is connected, they account for 35%. When I pull the power, they use less than 10%.

I checked the power settings jason, but there is only controls for when the computer should turn off the screen, hard drive, etc. Nothing on CPU throttling.

Edit:
Ok, so if you write powercfg in the command line, you get lots of options, among them a way to throttle the cpu. I set the throttling to be the same on DC and AC, but it still lags on AC power.

[silverx2]

a constant 15-29% is insanely high. if you just leave it what does to hover around? right now my desktop which is running Aim, Steam, and Ie is using between 0 and 4% of the cpu.

something to keep in mind, most laptops have a power save feature which will turn the cpu down to conserve power. so its likely that whatever program you have running on your computer taking up 48-65% of the cpu is being knocked back a bit by the fact that the computer is going into a power save type more.