This is true. The software didnt automagically lead me to realize I had a power issue. What I did was, once installed and running, my spikes triggered the software to tell me to check and turn off all extra peripherals, see if that resolves anything. Yes it did, firstly with my onboard soundcard (which I had enabled, though really didn't need it), then with my onboard LAN (which is MOST needed!). Out of both, my LAN caused the most issues when turned on and off. So, at this point, I had to either leave LAN off, or go through the process of manually turning on and off when needed, which, like turning your food manually in the microwave, would never happen! So now I had to find ways to improve my system as is, which I turned to some Win 7 optimizing strategies found online. Most didn't work until I found the Power one. I was lucky I had DPC running, else I never would have seen the dramatic change! That was it. I did a few tests to see how much it affected my issue, and turned on the onboard soundcard, changed a few settings to what they were, NOTHING affected my system, it was now rock solid. The Power settings affected my system pretty much 100%. That's HUGE.that is truly an excellent tool and i can see how it has shown you the cause of your bluescreen problems, but to find the cure it's then that some assumptions are being made ?
Control panel > Power Options. The only thing I saw related to device usage in Device manager was enabling or disabling specific hardware. Power profiles were mostly for Laptop users. I cant see why this makes any sense. I'm still trying to read why and how Win7 handles these profiles for tower setups with power supplies. Is the proc handled separately from the sleep and hibernate profiles? And if so, why when the computer is on and being used, the system doesn't give me full power unless I set it in Hi Performance mode? This really doesn't make sense!! But it exists, and everything I've tried made ZERO difference, except changing the power profile! I don't have one of Intels new fancy *** Core i5 and i7 procs either, so no turbo and the advanced power savings those procs offer. I have a simple Core 2 duo E4500 @ 2.20 ghz. No overclock. Gigabyte G33 MoBo. 6 gigs memory.As I understand it the overall power options in windows are mostly triggered reactions to timers or button presses such as sleep and hibernate etc but in amongst the advanced options there are settings which make specific power management changes , these are normally accessible from device manager ?
EDIT: What I've come up with is the device is supposed to be bus powered, firewire 400. However, with laptops, the FW buss isn't powered enough, so they have an aux power supply to use the device with laptops. My tower (mind you with an excellent T.I. firewire chip!) should be enough in its Balanced power profile!! I'm assuming High performance mode gives extra juice to everything, I know it makes your screen brighter, which I don't need, as well as to FW and USB busses. That's the only thing I can come up with.