Hibernation draws battery power?!

[awolfe63]

Disconnecting the battery briefly did not seem to help. Was I, perhaps, too quick? Do You do it for more than a second or two?

[akorn]

Disconnecting the battery briefly did not seem to help. Was I, perhaps, too quick? Do You do it for more than a second or two?

No, really just snap it out and back in. Do you have wake-on-LAN disabled in both BIOS and the Device Manager. If not, then keeping LAN on alert will inevitably consume some power.

I give the specs of my machine below, just in case this turns out to be model-dependent.

Andreas

X61s 7666-A8G, L7700 1.8 GHz, 3 GB RAM, Intel 82566MM Gigabit Ethernet

[awolfe63]

I'll try again.

I didn't know I needed to turn off Wake on Lan twice. I only turned it off once.


my machine is pretty close. only 2G and type 7668-CTO

[rgrossha]

Unfortunately, in sleep mode, lose about 2-3% per hour. Wake on LAN turned off. Power Manager is set to go into hibernation, but it doesn't appear to.

I'm posting this in part to let our friends at Lenovo who may be reading these posts to know this problem is a bit more widespread.

This is on a x61s, running Vista business.

This is perhaps my 8th Thinkpad, and none of the others exhibited this issue.

Really is a bother to always have to carry power brick, even if it small.

Rob

[awolfe63]

I want to do a few more experiments - but I think that I did need to turn off wake-on-lan twice. That seems to have solved the problem - but I haven't been paying careful attention. I'll try again tonight.

[pibach]

This problem actually occurs very frequently on a lot of thinkpads inlcuding my x61t and it has a variety of sources. Check out this site for details:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... ACPI_sleep

Definitely, there should be no power consumer in hibernation. Only Battery shelve drain which is less than 0.1 Watt. In sleep, the power consumption is 0.2-0.5 Watt (depending on device), never more. If you have more drain then your machine suffers from one of the issues (see link above).
However, it can be difficult to track down the culprit. Its a shame that Lenovo support does not help here and people are forced to do the battery trick or (that's what I did) move to Linux. BTW, my Xubuntu installation does run nearly 2 hours longer on battery in regular operation than Vista (due to recent major kernel enhancements in 2.6.24)

[awolfe63]

Well - my problem appears solved. Hibernation from 4PM yesterday until 11AM this morning only dropped .5WH (1% on the slim 4-cell) as opposed to more than 10WH before. I turned off wake-on-lan in the driver. (It was already turned off in BIOS)

[pmeinl]

Hybrid Sleep (Vista first writes the hibernation file and then goes to sleep) is by default set off for Notebooks. The rationale being that notebooks have a battery and are thus protected against a power failure and that notebook users want fast sleep and wakeup. By default if in sleep mode the battery gets low Vista wakes up and hibernates.[/list]

[awolfe63]

Look at my original post. The problem was that I was using XP-pro and still seeing battery loss in hibernation.

[akorn]

As stated above, I used a workaround for this problem: unhooking the battery for a brief moment would stop the power consumption of whatever component was not properly shut down before hibernating the system.

Now I noticed that my problem has actually disappeared. My guess is that it is related to one of the numerous Vista updates and patches that I installed over the past couple of months. In any case, no more discharge!

Andreas

X61s 7666, L7700 1.8 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, 160 GB, Vista Business

[Anastasius]

I got the same problem - battery is 20% drained after overnight hibernation. There should nbe another way! The way to find the device that stays on. It's a pity the way pibach suggested is for Unix only! Are there any similar procedures for us, poor Windows users?

akorn
You can finally damage your computer and battery mountings connecting and disconnecting the battery back and forth.

[Anastasius]

akorn, awolfe63, and all
I found the solution that perfectly worked for me!
I TURNED OFF THE ACTIVE PROTECTION SYSTEM, which gave me 2% battery drain overnight as opposed to 30% when it was turned off. (All other settings remained the same).

It's definetely a bug in Lenovo/IBM drivers.
Lenovo, please, fix it! Thank you.

[akorn]

Anastasius: Interesting solution! Which version of the ACTIVE PROTECTION SYSTEM is installed on your machine (open APS in the Control Panel and check the About tab)?

I still have 1.53 (Sept 07) installed and, as I said, it seems as if my problem has vanished between December of last year and now. There have been so many Vista and Lenovo updates that I cannot pinpoint the one that may have solved my discharge problem.

Btw: Thanks for worrying about the battery mountings. As I have now abandoned that routine, they'll survive

Andreas

X61s 7666, L7700 1.8 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, 160 GB, Vista Business

[Anastasius]

akorn

Version 1.54 oct 16 2007.
I'll try to find and install 1.53, if they're still available somewhere...

[Anastasius]

akorn
Thanks, it worked! I've installed 1.53 - and there were no extra energy consumption overnight. And no need to switch them off.

[corsairGT]

I was the first X 61s user to notify Lenovo about the heavy battery drain during hibernation. Lenovo, their Yamato laboratory (R & D) in Japan and I worked on this problem for a couple of months. It is a very elusive problem indeed. If you reinstalled your Vista, at first it wouldn't happen. The battery drain began only after a couple of patches/updates.

Lenovo's official explanation is, all notebook PCs meeting EnergyStar 4.0 standard will suffer from battery drain during hibernation. The culprit is Vista which is not a surprise! In order to meet EnergyStar 4.0, all notebook PCs during hibernation must keep the network card on standby to wait for Wake-on-LAN wakeup call.

Most PC users will plug in and power the notebook with AC current whenever it is available. Usually, you will shutdown or hibernate your PC before unplugging your AC source. Your PC sensing you have AC power will allow the network card to standby, thereby rapidly draining the battery dry.

This is indeed a very stuuuuupid Microsoft design. I have not come across any notebook PC users who need to keep their notebook awake overnight. However, I am sure most users would be very very upset to see a dead PC in the morning. EnergyStar was supposedly a more energy saving standard. It turns out to be a tremendous energy wasting standard!

I am sure you're all happy to understand what is draining your battery. Your immediate question is, is there a workaround or patch? The answer is a fortunate YES!

1st Solution:

Unplug your AC power adapter before hibernation. Unplugging the adapter will signal the PC that AC power will no longer be available during hibernation and therefore the notebook should turn everything off (including the network card).

2nd Solution:

Contact your local friendly Lenovo tech support or repair service for a small free albeit beta DOS patch called "POWERPATCH.EXE". This patch will not be available on Lenovo's website so, don't waste your time. You only need to run it once and your battery will stop draining. However, according to my experience, you do need to run it again whenever you update Lenovo/Microsoft patches or KBs.

According to Lenovo, the battery drain problem affects all ThinkPad meeting EnergyStar 4.0. Furthermore, to make you all feel maybe slightly better, this problem affects ALL notebook PCs meeting the same stupid standard; so you and I are not alone! Now aren't you feeling lucky that you've bought a ThinkPad?

[akorn]

Thanks, corsairGT, for posting this semi-official explanation of a long-standing problem. However, I had experienced the drain and saw it disappear (see my entries above) without applying one of the solutions you give. So frankly I doubt that the Energy-Star scenario you describe is the universal cause of battery drain on Thinkpads like my A31 and X61s (I have not changed my habit from putting the X61s to hybernation and then unpugging it to do it in reverse order).

Whether or not the Active Protection system version 1.54 is the culprit (see above), I cannot tell. However, as long as the drain does not creep up on me again, I'll keep using 1.53.

Andreas

[geobel]

It is indeed the network card that usually drains power when hibernation state is entered on AC power (try disabling the wired card before entering hibernation to test if this is the case). The usual trick, disabling Wake on LAN in bios and in "power management" tab of wired network card configuration window did not solve the problem for me. However, additionally disabling "Wait for Link", "Wake on Link", and "Wake on Settings" in "Advanced" tab of network card configuration window finally solved the problem. No more power drain when entering hibernation on AC power.

Gosha

[corsairGT]

If it was as simple as turning off a couple of network card settings, why would Lenovo write a DOS patch?

[zup]

Download the DOS patch here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/111883373/p ... h.exe.html

I tried. Virus free. The battery does not drain anymore. But I dont know whether this resulted from running this patch or disabling Wake on LAN, wake on link, etc... Anyway, it's worth doing all.

Moderator note: File appears to be blocked by Google at the moment (May 1, 2008 15:35 PDT). If and when it does become available, please exercise good judgment and scan the file for malware prior to execution.

[sliverstorm]

If it was as simple as turning off a couple of network card settings, why would Lenovo write a DOS patch?

Remember, they kind of try to target corporate markets. A DOS patch is download and run, everything taken care of for you. Why do you think the USB S3 sleep patch is a package? It's just 1 registry setting after all.

[awolfe63]

It is indeed the network card that usually drains power when hibernation state is entered on AC power (try disabling the wired card before entering hibernation to test if this is the case). The usual trick, disabling Wake on LAN in bios and in "power management" tab of wired network card configuration window did not solve the problem for me. However, additionally disabling "Wait for Link", "Wake on Link", and "Wake on Settings" in "Advanced" tab of network card configuration window finally solved the problem. No more power drain when entering hibernation on AC power.

Gosha

This is what solved my problem as well.

[Vlasta]

Unfortunately my problem on R61 was not solved, any battery drain still persists (now cca 10%, before cca 20% after 24h), all wake-on-, wait-for- disabled, exe patch applied ...

[coldfire]

me too. X61t.
tried everything suggested, no luck.

[tyanlion]

same here with x60s vista ultimate. sigh vista's really good i dont want to go back to xp because of this.

[teda]

Using command prompt tool "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed",you can find allowing the device wake from computer,stop the device.

[geobel]

After I did clean install of Vista Ultimate on my X61t the laptop started to drain power during hibernation again. This time modifying settings or even disabling network card did not solve the problem. So I came back to this thread and found the magic command "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" posted by teda. Upon executing the command windows identified High Definition Audio Controller as a wake-armed device. I would sure never guessed to look at Audio controller power management without that command. I found High Definition Audio Controller among "system devices" in Device manager and disabled wake up option in power management tab. Since then the problem is gone. No power drain in hibernation (network card setting should be modified too as described in this thread above). Importantly, every clean install of Vista Ultimate will likely have High Definition Audio Controller wake up enabled, so if you use hibernation I suggest checking pm settings for it. And be sure to look in system devices, not in Sound, video and game controllers.

Georgy
P.S. My sincere thanks to teda for the powercfg command!

[corsairGT]

Using command prompt tool "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed",you can find allowing the device wake from computer,stop the device.

I stopped the only device displayed. However, my battery continued to drain!

Lenovo claimed that the battery drain is normal in order to comply with EnergyStar v4.0. I find this explanation both ridiculous and absurd. It's because when I first acquired the PC (Vista), the battery didn't drain during hibernation. It only started to drain after I had installed a couple of patches from Lenovo/Microsoft.

The Powerpatch.exe Lenovo provided me worked for me until recently when I had to install more Lenovo/Microsoft patches. Those updates/patches must have somehow disabled Powerpatch. Lenovo was extremely irresponsible by refusing to update the patch.

Stop buying Lenovo!

Their logo ThinkVantage really means they make you 'Think' there is an ad'Vantage', whereas, there isn't any!

[giorgosvam]

Hello to everyone,

I have been experiencing the same problems. In the past, my T61 showed no signs of drain, provided all the right settings were made (no wake-on-lan, etc.). Since SP2 (and no change in any of the settings), nothing but removing the battery or hibernating while on battery prevented drain.

The problem is widely spread but unfortunately not well documented; discussions often center on (or drift towards) the original reccomendations. However, they do NOT address the current issue. To add to the confusion, it has been reported that Lenovo pointed to Energy Star 4.0 compliance as the reason for the (unavoidable) battery drain.

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon the following, released by Microsoft on the 2nd of July 2009:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970030/en-us

Before applying it, I checked if the High Definition Audio Controller is indeed the cause of drain (by deactivating the device and hibernating overnight). It was. After re-activating the device and applying the fix there is no drain anymore.

George

[corsairGT]

Hello to everyone,

I have been experiencing the same problems. In the past, my T61 showed no signs of drain, provided all the right settings were made (no wake-on-lan, etc.). Since SP2 (and no change in any of the settings), nothing but removing the battery or hibernating while on battery prevented drain.

The problem is widely spread but unfortunately not well documented; discussions often center on (or drift towards) the original reccomendations. However, they do NOT address the current issue. To add to the confusion, it has been reported that Lenovo pointed to Energy Star 4.0 compliance as the reason for the (unavoidable) battery drain.

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon the following, released by Microsoft on the 2nd of July 2009:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970030/en-us

Before applying it, I checked if the High Definition Audio Controller is indeed the cause of drain (by deactivating the device and hibernating overnight). It was. After re-activating the device and applying the fix there is no drain anymore.

George

Thanks George, it seems to work.