[Sworkhard]

This may or may not be video card related, but a computer I'm using runs extremely slow when not moving the mouse. This is especially evident when watching movies. It does not matter what format is being used. The computer is a Compaq Presario 2125ca laptop with a Athlon XP 1800+, Windows XP SP2, 40GB 4200rmp hd, Targus wireless notebook mouse, Radeon IGP 320M. Any ideas as to what is causing this problem?

[Albuquerque]

Power management isn't working right. The first clue was the mention of "laptop" along with the suggestion that simply doing something makes the machine run faster.

Go into your control panel, under the power settings, and change your "power profile" to something different.... Like maybe Always On or the like.

[Sworkhard]

Thanks, i'll do that.

[Sworkhard]

One, other thing, is there any way to solve these power management woes?

[Albuquerque]

What do you mean? It's a laptop, it's meant to slow down when you aren't interacting with it in order to save battery life. If you don't want it to, then simply turn off the power management by selecting "Always On" as your profile.

If you want it to save battery life, then you're pretty much SOL for making it not slow down the processor.

[Sworkhard]

It does it even with power management set to always on. When watching processor usage without the mouse, when the processor is running at full speed and watching a movie, about 10% of the cpu power is used. About 60% of the cpu power is used when moving the mouse, even if it is the slightest amount, and then it runs fine. Moving the mouse with the touchpad does not solve the problem, but moving a USB mouse does.

[Albuquerque]

It almost sounds like either your laptop needs it's own special power management software loaded (most laptops come with some funky software; IBM has it, Compaq has it, HP's have it, etc) -OR- that your processor driver may not be correctly identifying your mobile processor.

It might even be that your motherboard is having problems, but that's pretty far out there... Do you still have technical support on this computer? Maybe the 800 number folks could help with something like that. Power management on a laptop is sometimes a black hole, where things happen but nobody really sees what or how

[Sworkhard]

Well it is a Compaq laptop, but since it is 2 years old, it does not have any tech support left on it. that kinda makes me wonder if it has something to do with upgrading to service pack 2.