Hibernation draws battery power in Vista (Windows 7?)

School responsabilities are keeping me from configuring and enjoying my new T500 as much as I would like. But I'm still very happy to have received it.

It's been about five days since I last used my ThinkPad. The last time my T500 was on, the battery was fully charged. I left the unit in hibernation and unplugged from AC power. Today, I find that my battery is down to 33%!

Based on information here:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T5...-Battery-draining-while-turned-off/m-p/151272
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=48423&start=30
I've disabled all "wake-on" features for WiFi, LAN, and modem. I'll see if this has any effect.

The above links seem to suggest that this is a Vista problem. Does anyone else suffer from this or have a solution? Is this problem apparant in Windows 7?

Thanks

PS: I might be lucky, my 9-cell Sanyo batter has a design capacity of 84 Wh, but a full capacity of 88 Wh. I'm not sure if battery information would matter in this case.

 

Actually it sounds about normal if a small a of power is kept on the processor.
Renee

 

Although theoretically, it should be zero power draw, in reality, notebooks do lose power slowly (fraction of a Watt) on hibernate mode and will eventually drain the battery within a week or so (depending on the capacity).

 

I understand that a slight loss will occur. But don't you think 66% of a 9-cell battery is excessive?

 

You mean suspend not hibernate. The RAM is refreshed in suspend. In hibernate the data goes to disk. If you are paranoid about power loss in hibernate you can pull the battery and you will see it looses no more charge off the laptop than on it. Of course refreshing RAM for 5 days going to drain the battery in suspend... Even more so if you have a lot of memory.

 

No, I mean hibernate. There was a lot of writing to disk and then all the LEDs turned off. In addition, it took about 20 seconds to "resume Windows".

 

Pull your battery when you hibernate that long.

 

I never use hibernate, except to swap batteries. But 66% seems like an awful lot of drain, even for suspend mode.

Both my laptops draw maybe 4% when I went away for a week and a half.

 

I too, suffer from this. Battery drains rougly around 5% leaving the laptop on hibernation overnight.

It didin't used to be this way though. When I got my T61 in 2008, I'm able to put it in hibernation and have absolutely ZERO battery drainage. Somewhere around this year, I started noticing the battery drainage problem. I read somewhere that people suspected Vista SP2 is causing this. Haven't tried uninstalling it though.

Also, disabled items that might cause battery drain in the bios, but to no avail.

 

pepclub and scholar80, it is an obvious question, but have you tried with the laptop shut down completely?

 

I usually just hibernate the system, as it allows me to "start up" much faster. This battery drain caught me by surprise. So, I haven't yet tried shutting down completely. I'll try that next.

 

After disabling "wake on..." for all the network adapters and modem, I left my comp in hibernation (and unplugged) overnight. Now, my battery still at full charge. The drain seems to have disappeared -- or at least reduced considerably

I think the default config leaves some components on even during hibernation.

 

There was no battery drainage the last time I tried. Laptop shutdown, left overnight.

 

I notice on my system that if I hibernate overnight and remove A/C power a few minutes after the notebook is off, there is a slight decrease in battery power the next morning (~8 hours gives 96% on a 72WHr 8-cell battery). So over 5 days it is conceivable that battery could drop to 33%. Maybe if I disable "wake on...", it will lessen the power loss. On full shutdown, battery remains at 100%.

 

sgogeta4, pepclub: Thanks for helping test hypotheses.

 

If using windows vista sp2,disabled all "wake-on" features for wifi,lan,Hid mouse and modem,you can patch the hotfix kb970030,it is the url "http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970030"

you can use "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" to find the wake-on device in command prompt.

 

If using windows vista sp2,disabled all "wake-on" features for wifi,lan,Hid mouse and modem,you can patch the hotfix kb970030,it is the url "http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970030"

you can use "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" to find the wake-on device in command prompt mode.