atikmdag.exe / Windows 7 / laptop battery

[Truce]

Yes, I've tried Googling this - everything is about Vista and dated from two to three years ago. I've tried a system restore too, even earlier than needs be, and it didn't help. Either of these two responses will be ignored.

The problem: When my laptop tries to run on its battery (i.e. anytime it's not plugged in), I BSOD. The only thing it says is "atikmdag.exe" has encountered a problem. One of the results I found on Google, despite being from a couple years ago, related it to Catalyst Control Center; if that is of any significance.

Does anyone have information about why this happens, or how to fix it?

[Ad Bot]

[zz_tophat]

atikmdag.exe is related to your graphics card, when most laptops switch to battery they change to a lower power mode for things like graphics, go in to your power settings and change the settings for what your graphics are doing to what they do when the computer is plugged in.

[Truce]

I set all the unplugged settings to the same option as the plugged-in settings to be safe, and tried unplugging the power chord. It was fine, until I opened the start menu. Do you think it would make a difference if I switched them (put plugged-in settings to default unplugged settings), or would I just get another BSOD?

What I'm really wondering though is why I'm just now getting this - I haven't changed anything in the past few days, when it worked fine. I even system restored to a week ago and it stills happens.

[zz_tophat]

How old is your battery?

[Truce]

Not even a year old yet. I got this laptop last year around the holidays.

[zz_tophat]

Hmmm well BSOD of death in vista and 7 almost always means a hardware failure, your video card not getting a proper power supply would explain your problem.

Then again it could just just be something related to Windows 7 and it's power management.


Windows 7 is new so some strange combination of your hardware and windows 7 and your battery power is causing a fault somewhere. You won't be able to find a solution on google because you are most likely one of the few people out there having this problem.

[Truce]

Hm, I'll try contacting Dell support (Studio 1537) to see if any other reports about this problem have come in. I've been running Windows 7 on this laptop for a few weeks now, and never encountered any problems. Although, that might mean something happened to the battery. I'll check it out later to make sure it wasn't damaged some how.

You won't be able to find a solution on google because you are most likely one of the few people out there having this problem.

I figured that when all the results were from 06-07, when Vista was new.

[Nitramtj]

Google has search options to limit results to the past year/earlier.