Satellite A500-17X - Games slow down if I play on battery mode

Hi
When my laptop (Satellite A500-17X) is plugged in, the game I play (Call Of Duty 4) works very nice but if I try to play the game while my laptop is on battery the games slows down. If you know what I mean.
Is this supposed to happen because the graphic card doesn't work well when the laptop is on battery or is something wrong with my laptop?

Hi
As mentioned my Syntax, Windows power management decreases the performance of some devices like GPU or CPU using battery mode.
This helps to safe the battery power and to increase the battery working time
Furthermore your cooling modules dont run with full performance using battery and this would lead to a higher internal temperature which could slow down the CPU and GPU as well
So connected the AC adaptor or change the settings in power management but you should note that this will decrease the battery working time dramatically.

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Satellite A500-17X restarts while playing games

Hello all,
I have had my toshiba satellite a500-17x for about two years, I bought it to play Starcraft and world of warcraft. Ever since i got it i have had a problem with it. While playing games it would suddenly restart the laptop. I contacted the customer support and had it taken back to see if they could find out what was wrong with it. They said it was fine and it must be the games software that was causing the problem. (I do not believe that this is the problem since i reinstalled all software and the problem persisted)
I felt that they were trying to bluff me with this answer. Either they did not do an indebt inspection to try to resolve the problem or I believed that the model itself was flawed.
Anyway I wanted to say that the laptop can sometimes play fine for hours but on other days it will crash multiple times.
I just want to point out something; my graphics card driver is up to date. My air vents are completely clear. The temperature is stable. I have put the power management to maximum. I play with a battery in and the laptop is plugged in. This has also happened from a cold start.
During the restart i am given no advanced warning. The laptop just turns off (no beeps, no blue screen) and restarts.
I have never posted here before and i would really appreciate your help.
I know this has been a problem in the past with this model as i have searched forums for solutions but I cant find one.
If you know of a solution I would be very grateful.
Thanks

Hi
Gaming issues are always very difficult themes because nobody can say exactly if its caused by game <-> GPU driver compatibility problems or notebook (hardware) issues.
You said you had this issue playing two games but does it happens playing other games or running other applications (no games)???
In your case I recommend checking some gaming forums about StarCraft and WoW.
Maybe you will find some more details about that.
At the other hand the unit supports an NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M graphic chip.
Some people said that nVIdia driver 8.16.11.8973 would run stable
Also found this thread about driver update:
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=52522

Satellite A500-17X: How to install Win XP mode for Win 7 64bit

I bought a Toshiba Satellite A500 17X Laptop recently.
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I have since upgraded to Professional. I am trying to download and install the XP Mode from the Microsot website.
I have quit a few bits of software mostly Astronomy which worked in XP but will not install on Windows 7.
From the Microsoft web site i selected Professional 64bit from the drop down list.
When i tried installing the file a message popped up saying: +This is not a valid Win32 file+
So i downloaded the Professional 32bit file.
When i tried to install this the same message popped up. According to the videos on the Microsoft web site this should be easy.
Anyone know what i am doing wrong.
Thank You.
Greyhound

I too recently bought a Toshiba A500 17X laptop. Like you I also need to run some legacy XP programs that do not run under Win 7.
So, I found out that I must upgrade from Win 7 Home Premium to Win 7 Professional. But .... before parting with 100 quid or so I thought I would investigate a little.
At the Microsoft web site:-
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
It explains what steps to take.
At Step 2 you can run a tool to determine if 'your PC hardware works with Windows XP Mode...' This hyperlink takes you to the Microsoft Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Tool where you can download a guide and the tool to see if the PC is up to it.
I did this and it seems the hardware is NOT up to the task, nor as far as I can determine is there a switch in the BIOS to allow this.
Don't think it matters whether Win 7 is 32-bit or 64-bit.
This is really not good enough for a laptop that cost £700. ............or am I wrong?
Patriot

Want to buy slim remote control for Satellite A500-17X

Where can I buy a slim size remote control for my Satellite A500-17x?

Is your Satellite designed to work with remote control?
I ask this because it is not known to me that you can use remote control as additional option for notebooks.
Either is notebook delivered with remote control or certain model is not designed for it.
Have you checked notebook specification?

Satellite A500-17X - Which Windows version is installed?

The Toshiba detection tool indicates that my laptop runs a Windows Vista OS. But the Hardware basic information says it is a Windows7 premium home edition. Which is correct?
I have a Satellite A500-17X purchased from pc world. The laptop was advertised as a Win 7 laptop.
Thanks

Hello Xardas
I have a Windows 7 Home edition installed. The problem is, when I run the "TOSHIBA-242-detector" on the Toshiba support site it detects the OS on my laptop as a Windows Vista OS. I clicked Computer ==> Properties and the result indicated that a Windows 7 premium Home Edtion is installed - hence my confusion.
Anymore suggestions? Thanks
Joseph

Satellite A500-17X and HD TV

I am trying to connect my Satellite A500-17X to my HD TV via HDMI Cable, but I keep getting No Signal appear on the TV screen.
Can someone tell me does this laptop support HD?
Can this laptop be connected to a TV?
Thank You.
Greyhound

Hello
Yes, your laptop can be connected to TV. As you can see this notebook model is offered with HDMI port to allow you best video and audio signal transfer from your notebook to the TV.
HDMI port on your Satellite supports HDMI V1.3 (1080p).
Important is that you must enable right port on TV to get picture there.
So connect your notebook to the TV, enable video-in port (it can be HDMI1 or HDMI2, depending on TV) and use FN+F5 key combination to switch between notebooks display and your TV.
In users manual should be explained how it works.
If you dont have it you can download it HERE .
If youhave more questions you are welcome.

Satellite A500-17X - Not satisfied with it

My toshiba A500-17X is the worst laptop I ever had!
for 2 reasons:
1: http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=185832#185832
2: I was doing an assigment earlier (using world and access) when my laptop froze and the blue screen of death appeared (if only like FEW months old)
This is my first toshiba laptop...and my last one for sure!

Hi
A friend of mine has an A500 satellite model and its running properly.
He said the games run properly since he use an latest graphic card driver downloaded from some different pages.
Furthermore the notebook could restart automatically due to the warmness of CPU or GPU. For that its necessary to check if the cooling ventilators are free of dust and running with best performance.
>was doing an assigment earlier (using world and access) when my laptop froze and the blue screen of death appeared (if only like FEW months old)
BSOD can happen always. In most cases it could be a software related issue but of course it could be also an hardware issue. If BSOD will always appear then you should get in contact with an local ASP.
>Fan problem was sovled after 6 months with a simple BIOS update, speaker noise exists and no support from Toshiba! When I wrote a mail to ASP, they told me just send back, but it's exist WITH ALL A500 so it's not a speciel problem!
I dont think the problem appears on all A500. As mentioned the A500 from my friend is running ok.
PS: I read in other thread that some people could solve an sound crackling issue changing the settings;
One guy wrote:
+If you don't want to mess with powermizer there is another way to do essentially the same thing through nvidia control panel,+
+go nvidia control panel -> advanced settings -> manage 3d settings -> program settings -> (select program you think is causing the problem, internet browsers were a good one for me) -> power management mode and change it to 'prefer maximum performance'.+
+If this does help post on the nvidia forum mentioned in my earlier post about powermizer.+
Greetings

Satellite C850 - fan is slowing down + choppy videos

Hello
I am here to post this about my laptop fan my laptop is an Toshiba Satellite C850 and it has a i3 CPU core
i know this is not good for gaming
the only games i play is war thunder, minecraft and stuff like that not to big games for top speck pcs but its all i can get at the moment
i also do YouTube and when i am trying to play and record i notice my fan speeds up has normal frames then all of a sudden my fan slows down to 20% percent and i get 5 frames and the videos very choppy
If any one could help me this that would be very nice.
Thanks :)

Hi
From my point of few the notebook slow downs due to CPU overloading and the internal temperature.
Because of the high amount of processes which are running simultaneously, the CPU as well as the GPU go to the limit. The result is an high warmness produced by CPU and GPU and therefore the cooling modules and fan run faster.
After that the GPU/CPU performance will be decreased to reduce the warmness. This process slow down the fan and obviously this affects the video performance.
I think first of all you should check if the cooling vents are free of dust. The CPU and GPU require proper cooling and therefore the cooling grilles as well as fan should be free of dust and debris.
Furthermore I would recommend checking the window advanced power management settings.
There you can modify the cooling mode as well as the CPU and GPU performance.
Last but not least an clean system installation could be helpful too. Why?
Because system might be overloaded by different background processes which slow down the system and lock CPU

Satellite A500-17x Restarts

I have recently received my A500-17x back from repair, and now whenever I play a game, about 10 to 20 minutes in (Sometimes as few as 5 seconds, though.) the laptop will restart. No error/blue screen is shown. This had happened only once before the repair as far as I can remember, and I thought nothing of it; assuming it had overheated. Now the restarts sometimes occur within 5 seconds of launching a game, This is definitely not an overheating problem, as in many cases the problem occurs within minutes of startup, the laptop is cold to the touch. There have been several threads on this board that have touched on this problem, it is not just me experiencing this. The other threads suggested unplugging the AC adapter; and although this does work, it is hardly ideal as playing games without the laptop on AC power soon runs down the battery, and as such it is not really a 'fix'. After upgrading to internet explorer to IE9, I now find that I have to disable hardware acceleration in the browser as leaving it on also causes the seemingly random restarts. I also found that eventually the DWM would cause this issue too, although it seems to be far less frequent - requiring several hours of use.
Other threads for reference:
[t-59014]
[t-49339]
[t-58989]
One person claimed that having the motherboard replaced solved the issue for him. If so, a part number for that particular motherboard would be greatly appreciated, as would any information reguarding a true 'fix' for this issue. If you are also experiancing this problem; please post to say that you have the issue to; as it would be interesting to see how many A500 owners experiance this problem.

Hi buddy,
I think you cant compare your problem/notebook with other A500 threads because you wrote that problem only appeared after repair and before that everything was ok.
If you have changed nothing on software and installation I would contact the authorized service provider again or have you already done this? It would be interesting to know what the guys say about this behavior but I think they will offer you checking the notebook again and fix this problem.
So get in contact with the local ASP and explain your situation and the guys will help you to get rid of this :)

Satellite P505D-s3859 random slow down then crash

I got the laptop with Windows Vista, had this problem (along with many other Vista related ones), so I formatted and installed Windows 7 with all the drivers hoping to fix it. Same problem. Doesn't seem to affect Ubuntu Linux when I dual boot over into that, but my laptop reliably crashes or has to be rebooted at least once or twice a day.
The problem seems to be random, but let me describe the normal case that I'm in when it occurs. I will be running Windows 7, multiple browsers, Yammer, Skype, dropbox, winamp and AVG. The first, most obvious symptom is that any USB pariphials will stop working (I use a usb wireless mouse) and the sound will go into uber-slow motion mode. At this point, everything on the laptop will be ultra slow to respond, but I can still close my apps down if I do it quickly. If I'm not using any external usb nor listening to an audio file, and I miss the slow down event, the laptop will eventually crash.
When this happens, I ctrl-alt-del and check task manager, but I don't see anything particular using up all the resources. I've updated everything I could with the windows 7 drivers from the toshiba site, but still have this problem. It was affecting me with Windows Vista, and this is the second Windows 7 install I've done on this laptop, with the same symptoms.
This is the only thing I see in Event Viewer->Windows Logs->System:
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
Date: 2/25/2011 5:46:41 PM
Event ID: 37
Task Category: (7)
Level: Warning
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: sunwu
Description:
The speed of processor 1 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 7 seconds since the last report.
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
Date: 2/25/2011 5:46:41 PM
Event ID: 37
Task Category: (7)
Level: Warning
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: sunwu
Description:
The speed of processor 0 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 7 seconds since the last report.

Satellite P505D-s3859
Maybe this one? (It has all the digits.)
Satellite P505D-S8935
I'm not a hardware guru, but the problem seems consistent with a flaky hard drive. It certainly has nothing to do with software. See what chkdsk c: /r has to say.
The entry in Event Viewer occurs when the processor is throttled back to save battery charge.
-Jerry

Both IE and FF flash videos and games slow down/lag???

Starting a half a year to a year ago, flash videos/video players and flash games on firefox and IE would run
fine for a little while and then lag/slow down ridiculously. For the videos it would lag and skip for the rest of the video, but for the flash games it goes through a cycle of running fine and then running slow/very slow for a period of time. How can I fix this? It is so annoying and can make playing flash games and watching videos with flash almost impossible some times.
I unchecked the the box for hardware acceleration already.

Do you have any suggestions in terms of the slowing down/lagging issue? Also, is there an issue with flash player itself that is causing everyone to have all these problems with it ruining videos and stuff? Is adobe working on it/is there any hope that future version of flash player will get rid of the lag or has adobe gone down a path that is just going to cause problems for some people, permenantly, no matter what?

Satellite A500-17X: How to get new backlight keyboard to work?

Hi there
I recently had to replace the keyboard on my A500-17X (PSAR3E-00N005EN) and I decided to replace it with the backlit model of the same keyboard. The original keyboard wasn't backlit but I thought i'd give it a go anyway as it was the same price.
I installed it into my laptop and everything is working fine apart from the backlight function.
There was even a port for the power ribbon to go into so it is definately installed properly. I read on other forums that it is sometimes an issue with the BIOS or HWsetup but my BIOS doesn't give me the option for it and neither does HWsetup.
I was just wondering whether there is a way of getting the backlight to work on the keyboard.
Perhaps a different driver or changing the BIOS/HWsetup somehow?
Would appreciate any answers!
Regards
James

I believe there is no way to activate the backlight through drivers or BIOS settings. You may need to send the notebook to a Toshiba Repair center to get it activated.

Satellite A500-17X - Cursor has changed to a black box

I have an A500-17X and the cursor has changed from the normal "I" to a black box which flashes in the same way that the normal "I" cursor does. I'd really appreciate any help with this as it is now driving me mad!
Thanks in advance
Liz

Is this in DOS or Windows?
Press the INS key. If it still does it, install the A500 Display Driver from the Toshiba Website.

Satellite A500-17X - When will new display driver be released?

Is there any information about when the NVIDIA 190.xx or 195.xx drivers will be released for the A500-17X?
I'm trying to use the CUDA Toolkit 2.3 drivers (which are the first drivers which support OpenCL) and I'd really need the 19x.xx NVIDIA display drivers (currently, the most recent driver is the 186.42 driver). I'm just trying to get an idea, if possible, when I might be able to run some tests with OpenCL.
Thanks.

Well, an update. Actually, my question as to when we might have new drivers has not been addressed, but I was given some information to update the drivers using the ones on the NVIDIA website.
However, because this has not been tested, and you could potentially cause problems (which means I would not recommend someone who does not have fairly extensive experience with driver installations and recovery of a system, to try this, in case things do go wrong), I will let anyone interested contact Toshiba directly to request the information.
However, it does seem to address a problem that has appeared in another thread, regarding crackling/freezing/blue screen of death. So far, my system seems to be much better with this upgrade, so, if the problem is indeed due to the NVIDIA drivers, I can only suggest that Toshiba hurries up and officially releases the new drivers.

Satellite A500-17X blank screen on boot up using battery power

When I boot up A500-17x in battery power, it is getting booted up in the background, but my screen is blank.
After that if I connect it to AC power and switch off/on the laptop power button, the display comes back to life.
There is no problem when I boot up when connected to AC power.
Any suggestions?

Hi
Very strange issue
Did you notice this issue from beginning?
First of all check if your BIOS is up to date. Update the BIOS if newer version is available.
Furthermore it would be recommended to update the display driver.
But if both updates dont change this, then I would recommend contacting an ASP in your country. It could be a hardware issue.

Satellite A500-17X - Games slow down if I play on battery mode

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