Vista/Power Options

Anyone figured out how to disable critical battery shutdown in Vista while on battery yet?

 

open Control Panel -> Power Options -> Then hit "Change Plan Settings" -> then hit "Change Advanced Power Settings"...

Tweak to your hearts content...

 

Thanks for the reply, but the only 2 options available are "sleep" and "hibernate"-I would prefer to kill the critical shutdown completely, it is possible in ac mode but not in battery mode.

 

Why wolud you want to kill critical shutdown under battery power? Doing so will drain your battery below the point it EVER should be drained and the OS machine will crash? Sleep or hibernate sre MUCH better options than a over drain of the battery and a crash.

Gary

 

cause I would like to play around with how long the battery actually lasts... and I prefer to be the one in control of the machine not MS.

 

Dont go hating Microsoft for everything now ...the critical battery thing is crucial if you want your battery to maintain a healthy life cycle for at least 2-3 years. If you let a lithium ion battery drain below a certain cutoff point, then it seriously damages the battery and possibly,...may not start properly.

Anyway, your laptop will probably automatically shut down or hibernate when there is like 5% battery life left...you wont gain much out of 5%...better to keep your battery healthy

 

I believe he is suggesting that the computer doesn't know how much charge is left, which does happen, and therefore he wants to run the computer until the battery really is dead. When it says 5 minutes left, it really may be able to go for another hour. I know this is a known issue with a few makes and models.

 

Calculating the remaining useful life of a lithium ion battery still has much work to do. Technically even when your laptop (regardless of OS), or any mobile device (mobile phone, mp3 player, etc) shows that there is 5% battery life left, in reality there is way more battery life left...but its for safety measures that the device is programmed to turn off or whatever at that indication.

An example is of a cell phone. Most cell phones have 4.2V lithium ion batteries these days...when your cell phone's battery indicator starts blinking and even turns off, its actual voltage level is probably around 2.6-2.8V. So every time you use a cell phone, it operates between 2.6/2.8V to 4.2V.

All mobile devices with lithium ion batteries are programmed to operate that way...if the device is used below that cutoff point, then the battery could go off into a thermal runaway, which is a fancy word for a steep decline in voltage...and the battery could possibly explode.

Thats probably more detail than most people would like to read

 

Thanks for the replies guys and I understand all of your info but I would like to play around a bit and was curious if there is a trick to turning this option off in Vista, I know it's possible in XP. I feel that there is a major conflict between Windows power settings and Power4gear for one thing and I do not get any consistent battery levels ever, the monitor sometimes shows 3 hours available on High Performance and sometimes at the same charge level I get an hour or so on Battery Saving, I understand those vary due to usage, heat, etc. so I would like to start troubleshooting and step one for me is to have control of the machine's settings.

I know there are several long threads related to the performance issues of batteries and that is why I wanted to keep this simple and just find out if anyone has gone deeper than the obvious.

Thanks again,

razo

 

Go to Control Panel > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings > Change advanced Power Settings > Battery. Click on the + sign. Click on Critical Battery Level + sign, and change them to 0%. Then, click on the Low Battery Action, and select Do nothing for the On Battery option. You're done.

I think that's what you wanted to know?

 

Thanks Silas, I might just give that a shot and see if it will trick Vista, but I have a feeling it will still shut down at 0% on critical battery action.

 

With the sony vaio FZ battery which is draining at the rate of 1-3%/minute, critical battery state is a common occurence. The battery state of 0% is not the actual empty battery. It is the cutoff limit. No matter even when you have 0% in ur power options the notebook will come to a dying stop.

 

Yeppers, I don't unserstand why XP has the option but not Vista?

 

Hoora! Installed rmclock and I am now able to eliminate what I needed to and I can now choose "do nothing" under critical battery action!!!---ac or battery...mmmuuuhahahhaha MS!!!

 

This is not funny.

 

Once the charge of battery is actually 0% it will be damaged forever....u can't charge it then....although u can never do it urself because battery is designed to die before its completely drained

 

I realize the drain to 0% isn't a good idea, at least not all the time and it's not a true 100% discharge either way, I just wanted control over it for awhile while I tweak the laptop. Thanks all for the replies, I apperciate your time and help on the issue.