Thinkpad Power Manager problems

[someotherguy]

Well you really have me stumped.  I have no idea why Power Manager isn't seeing at least the default windows power schemes.

[dm67]

and... if I create a new scheme within Thinkpad power manager, or if I import one... nothing happens. After the creation/import process, the PM still does not show anything.

Well... I appreciate that we're both stumped... but now? Should I throw that PC into the fire??? ;-)

Anyone wants to try the thrill of trying to tame my Thinkpad Power manager?

Thanks again.

[littleo]

I have had  the same issue - the powerprofile-list in the registry has grown to large.

This is obviously a bug in Lenovos Power Manager which installs the same powerprofiles with every

update or installation over and over again.

You may want to delete them in the registry as described here: 

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Power-Manager-Problems/td-p/23322

Registry path is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies

Cheers,

o

[dm67]

Thanks littleo, but I already tried all this, and did not resolve for me.

[pitrack_1]

Hi dm67,

I too was affected recently by this issue on my X200 running XPPro. The power schemes became corrupted in a very similar way, including the lockout, missed policies, inability to edit and crashing of Power Manager:
- admin user had only power source optimised (PSO) which was active
- power user had only PSO + Video Playback (VP) with VP unselectable
- normal user had 2 or 3 with only PSO selected (I think they were locked out due to permissions)
- a normal/guest user had  (importantly) all the profiles with only PSO selected (again locked out due to permissions)

After faffing around trying to reinstall the software, as you did, I hit upon the following solution.

*** NOTE: REGISTRY CHANGES- BACKUP (esp. REGISTRY) FIRST!!! ***
 - Have a look at what was posted in http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/power-manager-predefined-power-plans/td-p/2172... . This also didn't work for me and my xxxxx-yyyy-zzzzzzzz-etc keys were different.
 - I too had multiple policies listed into the many 10's if not 100's.
 - This is dependent on an uncorrupted account and admin privileges.
 - I also tried exporting and importing the \HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT power schemes, but this didn't work.

1. Log on as an afflicted user and using regedit,  delete the "\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\" key/path and all underneath it. If the affected user doesn't t have the permissions, you need to log on as an admin and give the permissions (e.g. elevate to power user) first.
 - Removing the Policies resulted in no policies being listed for the (now really) afflicted user.

2. Elevate and log back in as the account with the apparently uncorrupted Policies and export them ( the \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\ key/path)  from regedit to a file e.g. c:\temp\PowerPolicies.orig.reg . Unelevate the uncorrupted user again.

3. Log back in as the afflicted user and double click the exported registry file, say Yes to accept the registry change and import the good Power Schemes. Hey presto! You should now have the Power Schemes as before. Unelevate the (now un-)afflicted account.

4. Repeat steps 1 and 3 for all corrupted accounts.

Hope this helps!

[dm67]

Hi pitrack_1, thanks for your suggestions.

Unfortunately I have no "uncorrupted" user on my machine, because I uninstalled the Power Manager and wiped out all Power Schemes and Policies from the registry several times.

But...

I have a similar machine (working... luckily for the colleague using it)... and I exported these policies from it, and then reloaded into my user on my machine.

Needless to say... it does not work. I also tried installing the "energy star" schemes that can be downloaded from IBM support site, but no way.

Then I have compared both registry values from

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Lenovo\PWRMGRV\PowerSchemes

First one seems to be correct, while those last ones seem to be the ones affected by Lenovo Power Manager. Just after PM installation, all Keys are EMPTY. So I filled in with the values got from the other working machine, but when I start the PM again, it empties all the values and creates new fake (duplicated?) schemes... and we're back. 

It seems that something wrong happens at Lenovo's PowerSchemes level, i.e. Power Manager is not able to fill the correct keys, rather than at Windows' default schemes.

Still digging...

[dm67 · Accepted solution]

Whooopsss...

Doing it again... something happened... Now I was able to populate manually the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Lenovo\PWR​MGRV\PowerSchemes

keys under my user, using similar values from the other machine.

Lenovo Power Manager seems to retain them now. Let me check a bit that solution... I'll keep updated.

[pitrack_1]

Any news, dm67?

[dm67]

After a week of work... I can confirm that it works, and it's stable. No more fake profile schemes.

Just to summarize... I restored the schemes into the registry from an exported copy of keys, taking care to place the values under the keys accordingly to the original PowerSchemeID.

Thanks for helping me. We can mark this issue as resolved.

[stevedrz]

All,

I had the exact same problem on a Windows XP Box.  What I noticed in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies was that the #'s in XP went from 0-5 (The Windows Default), to 5x-59, etc... with no #'s in between.  I believe a properly configured one, should not have that, and instead #'s 6 and on...    I went ahead and did the grunt work in XP and posted a link on my website with the process used, and an XP registry file to use, (first delete the old profiles, in regedit!)

http://www.gotsteve.com/blog/lenovo-power-manager-profiles-not-working-try-this/

If someone follows my process in Vista/7,  I'll post a reg file for that, too...

Enjoy, hope it helps!!!