Balancing Power Conservation and Performance with POWER.EXE (96603)
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.0
- Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.2
- Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.21
- Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.22
This article was previously published under Q96603 SUMMARY
The Power program (POWER.EXE) monitors keyboard polling and the Application
Idle interrupt to determine if a system is idle; it monitors use of the
hard disk, video functions, and MS-DOS functions to determine if a system
is busy.
POWER.EXE may incorrectly determine that your machine is idle if you are
using communication programs, computation-intensive programs, or other
programs that infrequently access the hard disk. When POWER.EXE detects
that the system is idle, it halts or slows down the CPU, which adversely
affects application performance if your machine is not truly idle.
MORE INFORMATION
With the ADV[:MIN|REG|MAX] command line switch, you can indicate whether
your higher priority is power savings or application performance.
Specifically, the ADV parameter controls the keyboard polling detection. If
application performance is suffering because of false idle detections, you
can use the ADV:MIN option to trigger fewer false idle detections. However,
this option provides minimal power savings when your machine is idle. The
ADV:MAX option provides maximum power savings but increases the chances of
false idle detections. The default setting is ADV:REG, which balances power
conservation with performance.
Type "power" (without the quotation marks and without any parameters) at
the MS-DOS command prompt to determine the current settings.
| Modification Type: | Major | Last Reviewed: | 11/24/1999 |
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| Keywords: | KB96603 |
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