Dear members,

I don't know what seems to be wrong with my toshiba laptop 1400-s151 (hardrive 2 years old but still works fine) with window xp home edition. I have verizon fios with 1 MB download speed and 5 MB browsing speed. What happens is, when the power adapter is connected with the laptop to supply power from the power cord and not from the batteries the internet speed works perfectly fine. However, when i disconnected the power adapter from the laptop when the batteries are recharged to 100% , a messages appears on bottom right (where are the icons are ex: time, norton virus icon etc) that a local area connection or a network cable is unplugged. After that I get disconnected for 3-5 seconds but then it reconnects itself back as if i just connected the ethernet cable to the laptop. However, thats besides the real problem which is the speed becomes noticably slow (like dial-up with download speed less the 80 kbs from the usual 700-900 kbs) and it stays slow until I plug back the power adapter when the battery power is runing low. (its as if i go back to dial-up when running on batteries and back to fios running on power adapters...weird!) And when i do plug back the power adapter it gives me yet again the same message (a local area connection or a network cable is unplugged ) for 3-5 seconds then reconnects itself as if i again just now connected the ethernet cable to the laptop. And since the laptop is now running on power adapter and not the batteries the speed comes back to normal (from pervious dial-up speed to FIOS verizon speed). It has been doing this for over an year and i dont know why and what causing this (ran norton virus and other spyware tools but nothing changes). Therefore, can someone please tell me what is causing this and how I can fix the problem? Anything will help! I will be waiting for your useful suggestions and remarks!

is your laptop wifi, if so get a router it only stops when its off..... lol

I can't give you an exact diagnosis of the problem, but I may be able to explain a few things. The disconnection/reconnection thing may be just your laptops motherboard re-routing the power from the mains input to the batteries. The switch-over causes your network interface to shut down for a split second.

Another factor to consider is your processor speed. Most laptops have variable speed processors that adjust the speed relative to how much use you give it. When you leave the laptop idle it runs at a slower pace, when you start using applications it speed back up. However, many laptops are designed to limit the power consumption of the processor when it is running on batteries. For example, my laptop has a 2000 MHz Processor , but when I disconnect from the mains it slows right down to 800 MHz. To check the running speed of your processor, open the start menu and then right click on My Computer and select properties. This will show you the current processor speed. It might be that when you are running on batteries, the power-saving feature built in to you processor is slowing it down and restricting the speed of your entire system (including your download speeds as hard disk access and memory bandwidth between components is also slowed down).

This is just a very broad way of looking at and does not apply to all laptop makes and models. It may be that you have another specific problem causing it.

its doesnt do that that on our laptop.

I said most laptops, not all. But I have since found out that it's not used on Centrino mobile processors much and that is a pretty big chunk of the market. My laptop has got a standard desktop PC Processor in it which uses up a lot of power which is why the smart save feature kicks in. Even with the power save I still get pretty naff battery power (About 1 hour, even when it was new) because it's not the much lower voltage Centrino type (and whatever the AMD equivalent is).

I did say that this was a pretty broad way of looking at it and is not for all makes and models! They're just suggestions as to what it might be.

Anyways, there is still the power disconnection and switchover to battery that may be causing the problem. Some laptops can do it smoothly and some can't. I can't try the problem out on mine because I've been Wi-Fi for ages (if your laptop can do it then it's well worth switching over). I used to have loads of connection problems with a wire, but I haven;t had a single problem with Wi-Fi in almost a year of using it.

If you can't find any solution then it might just be that you'll have to accept that your laptop won't run it's network features at full speed on battery power!


Oh yeah, to properly check the processor speed you have to do the My Computer/Properties thing twice (Once before and once after disconnecting the power cable). It might stay the same if your laptop doesn't have or "SpeedStep" built in for CPU Throttling

hmm thats true.