Solved! Dell inspiron 1545 and bios settings

[spanz]

I bought this inspiron 1545 laptop for my kid. After he used it for around a year, he had all sorts of problems with it, and I bought him a new I5 computer. Now I have this boat anchor to play with while I watch tv. It is a P8600, and I threw away the vista and installed windows 7 and a SSD, so at least it is stable and useable. But I am only getting, at best 45 minute of battery life out of it, even though it has a 9 cell battery. Then it dawned on me, I only use this for cruising the internet.....why not throttle back the cpu (i.e. the exact opposite of overclocking it)!

I can get into the dell "bios", but it is nothing like I am used to on a desktop motherboard. There is no way to tweek the system voltages, like Vcore or Vram.

Is there any way to access that part of the bios, or am I stuck with the cr*p that dell put on this for a bios? Is there any aftermarket software I can load to allow me to tweek system voltages or clock speeds?

BTW, this was the LAST dell I bought, or ever will. What a piece of junk.

 

[Pyree]

Yes, laptop bios are very limiting. Try play with the window power options. I think the short battery life is caused by repeated deep cycle discharge. Lithium ion battery is better run at a plugin/top-up mode, with drain every month or so. Get CPUID hardware monitor, it will give you the battery designed maximum capacity and your current maximum battery capacity and your current charge capacity. Probably need to change battery.