Thinkpads Forum

My 2nd W510 will use about 30% or it's battery while turned off for about 6 days. I have owned a lot of Thinkpads and never seen more than maybe a few percent over this same period of time. Even my first W510, the exact same model, did not loose 30% over 6 days of being turned off.

Any ideas?

Checked in the Lenovo Toolbox and there was a "Critical Battery Firmware Update"

I assume this would take care of it.

A good reason to invest in Lenovo!

Still the same problem. Turned the W510 on this am and it was down to 70%. My previous W510 could go weeks and only loose a few percent. Is everyone elses W510 dropping power like this?

I wonder where it is going.

Make sure "wake on lan" is disable both in the BIOS and the Windows driver for all network devices.

OK, checked and found that "Wake on Magic Packet" was enabled, not disabled and we will see how it does.

Hope that was it, thanks for your help!

Will post back the results next Saturday!

Turned on my W510 this Saturday morning and the battery was down to 69%! Something must be wrong as my previous W510 (exact same model) would only loose a couple percent over 6 days of being turned off.

Anyonme else loosing this much battery power while turned off?

Is it shut down, in Sleep, Hibernation?

richk wrote:Is it shut down, in Sleep, Hibernation?

It is turned off, shut down, before placing in a drawer waiting for the next Saturday. So it sits from Sunday night till the next Saturday morning in the shut down mode.

I would not think too much of this except I had the EXACT same model that only lost a couple percent. It does not hurt anything except the cycle counts on the battery.

Was just wondering if others had the same issue. All I can see running when I shut it down is the tiny LED at the finger reader and that can't be it as the other unit has the same thing.

What happens if you reset BIOS to default values? Flash to a different BIOS?

Harryc wrote:What happens if you reset BIOS to default values? Flash to a different BIOS?

I am not sure what the default values in the bios are. All is working so good I hate to reset everything to default. I have looked at the settings over and over and see nothing that should be eating up 30% of the battery. I will remove the battery next week to see it maybe it is a battery problem.

If you go into BIOS then hit F9, then save and exit it will load defaults.

Harryc wrote:If you go into BIOS then hit F9, then save and exit it will load defaults.

I know how to do this, I wondering if I want to do this.

Up to you...just something to try.

My bet is that there is some device that consumes battery power. I would go over all that appear in the device manager and make sure their wakeup functions are disabled.

I don't see that. How would a device manager setting in Windows effect the battery when the Laptop is off? Windows doesn't run when the laptop is off. This is a BIOS issue.

One more thing to try. Try turning it off and pulling the battery out for a few days. If the battery loses charge, the problem is the battery, not the computer.

Harryc wrote:I don't see that. How would a device manager setting in Windows effect the battery when the Laptop is off? Windows doesn't run when the laptop is off. This is a BIOS issue.

Windows does not run when the laptop is in Standby or Hibernate either. Neither does the BIOS. However, Windows, just like the BIOS can change settings in the hardware, some of which stay in place even when the laptop is off. This can be a BIOS issue as much as a Windows setting issue, it's just that there are far more Windows settings are there.

richk wrote:One more thing to try. Try turning it off and pulling the battery out for a few days. If the battery loses charge, the problem is the battery, not the computer.

A good suggestion. I automatically assumed that the battery is not the problem, but who's to say?

dr_st wrote:However, Windows, just like the BIOS can change settings in the hardware, some of which stay in place even when the laptop is off..

This concept doesn't make sense to me, but OK I am open to it. If it is true, then lets say Greg has his Power Management profile set to not charge the laptop until it's at 20% charge. He turns the machine off at 100% charge and then this power drain starts, and it brings the battery down to around 30%. The battery doesn't charge because of the power management battery charging threshold setting, and 6 days later Greg sees the problem of low charge. It would make sense that if he set it to 100% all the time, then this problem would go away because he'd never see it. This is assuming of course that he leaves his laptop plugged in, and again if the concept is true. So Greg, have you set this charging threshold? If yes, put it back at 100% and see what happens. Hopefully I am not seeing eye to eye with this concept and this will fix the issue.

Think about it this way too, if the laptop remembered power management settings while powered down, and if Greg had his battery threshold set at 100% already, he'd never see this problem, again assuming the laptop is plugged in all the time. My theory is that the laptop doesn't actively apply power management settings until is is booted into Windows (or some OS).

Also you stated, "Windows, just like the BIOS can change settings in the hardware, some of which stay in place". My question to you would be , Ok (for Windows) then where is this 'place'? The battery? RAM?
I don't think laptop computers are quite as magical as you might imagine .

My battery is set to maximize life but is below the threshold when I wake it up on Saturday morning. This causes the battery to start charging and it continue to do so till it hit 100%. I then use my laptop all weekend on AC. like always, and put it away for the week with the battery at 96 to 98% indicated.

I will try removing the battery on Sunday night after shutting down and storing till the next Saturday. I will report back

I have reset the BIOS to all defaults and have checked all device in device manager to make sure that are not set to wake up or even listening to do so.

I thank everyone for their thoughts

Just so you know that you are not alone, my T500 does the same thing. I rarely use it, so I've had the experience of shutting it off with a fully charged 9 cell battery and trying to turn it on two weeks or so later only to find the battery is completely discharged.

After a little trial and error, including shutting off all possible BIOS settings (no help), I found that the discharging didn't occur when the machine was "shut down", but did occur when "hibernate" was used.

Apparently, it has to do with the modem and/or audio chipset waiting to wake the machine. I believe this can be disabled in the Power Manager settings.

You can do a Google search for "thinkpad battery discharge hibernation" and see more.

Greg Gebhardt, is your machine using battery when "shut down" or just "hibernate"? I hope this helps.

underclocker wrote:Just so you know that you are not alone, my T500 does the same thing. I rarely use it, so I've had the experience of shutting it off with a fully charged 9 cell battery and trying to turn it on two weeks or so later only to find the battery is completely discharged.

After a little trial and error, including shutting off all possible BIOS settings (no help), I found that the discharging didn't occur when the machine was "shut down", but did occur when "hibernate" was used.

Apparently, it has to do with the modem and/or audio chipset waiting to wake the machine. I believe this can be disabled in the Power Manager settings.

You can do a Google search for "thinkpad battery discharge hibernation" and see more.

Greg Gebhardt, is your machine using battery when "shut down" or just "hibernate"? I hope this helps.

My W510 is shut done. Turned off.

Harryc wrote:Also you stated, "Windows, just like the BIOS can change settings in the hardware, some of which stay in place". My question to you would be , Ok (for Windows) then where is this 'place'? The battery? RAM?

For example, the BIOS. Or more accurately, the same part of the BIOS ROM chip that holds the data that the BIOS code uses.

In other words, Windows applications can update stuff in the BIOS. Remember Thinkpad Configuration and how you could use it to change the same settings that are also present in the BIOS? Like that.

Of course, the battery for instance has its own embedded controller where you store charge thresholds etc. But I don't think it would store anything related to other devices. It wouldn't be stored in the RAM either, as RAM gets cleared. But peripheral devices have their own non-volatile memory blocks, and such settings could be stored there.

Fundamentally, the BIOS is just another piece of code, except it runs off a programmable ROM chip instead of off the hard drive. It doesn't do anything to the hardware that any operating system application cannot do, through the same interfaces. The difference is that it does it early in the boot stage before any operating system can do the same (or different) things.

Another option, is that due to some buggy driver flow - one of the devices, instead of going into a full-off state goes into some low-power state and continues to drain the battery, even when the rest of the machine is off.

Harryc wrote:I don't think laptop computers are quite as magical as you might imagine .

Believe me, I am the last one to imagine magic in computers. A few years of working closely with hardware/BIOS/driver designers and testers have taught me that this is the last place where magic would exist.

Sorry for the off-topic, but the academic discussion is interesting.

Since I haven't used my T500 much, it certainly seemed to be a shut down vs. hibernate issue (altough, even that doesn't make much sense to me).

Unless you determine that your battery is defective, I'd keep at tweaking settings and make sure your BIOS is kept up to date.

One thing to try is shut down the machine with the power cord unplugged. I think it may behave differently when shut down with power and without...maybe.

Good luck and definitely keep us posted on what you find.

UPDATE: I started to use my T500. I shut it via Win 7 64-bit hibernation down three days ago. The near new 9 cell battery was fully charged, 100%. After three days of non-use, I turned it on and the battery is down to 85%. I'll keep looking for a solution or the cause of the issue. (This also definitely happened with Vista, too.)

There are several threads on the Lenovo forum about this, here is one --> http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-a ... m-p/298140

underclocker wrote:UPDATE: I started to use my T500. I shut it via Win 7 64-bit hibernation down three days ago. The near new 9 cell battery was fully charged, 100%. After three days of non-use, I turned it on and the battery is down to 85%. I'll keep looking for a solution or the cause of the issue. (This also definitely happened with Vista, too.)

There are several threads on the Lenovo forum about this, here is one --> http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-a ... m-p/298140

I don't have mine yet, but do these systems not have a "always on" USB port? (For charging batteries in cell phones, etc)? If this port is also powered while on battery this could explain it. Once again, I think the BIOS settings hold the key.

tpribors wrote:I don't have mine yet, but do these systems not have a "always on" USB port? (For charging batteries in cell phones, etc)? If this port is also powered while on battery this could explain it. Once again, I think the BIOS settings hold the key.

They do have this option. I've tried disabling it in the BIOS. The battery still looses capacity while off!

The always on "yellow" powered USB port is only powered while either turned on or if off it has got to have the ac power supply connected. I have checked with my Blackberry and it goes cold dead when I remove the ac adapter while the W510 is turned off.

I have tweeked every setting possible in my bios and have worn out the device manager settings.

I still think this is hardware related as the 256 SSD I am using in this W510 is the exact same one I used in my previous W510 (exact same model.)

OK, removed the battery last Sunday evening before I put my W510 in the drawer for the week. Removed it a few minutes ago and inserted the battery and the battery is at 98%. It was at 99% when I put it in the drawer.

SO we know that it is not the battery but the W510 that is sucking the power out of my battery while it is turned off. Guess I am going to have to live with it as I have tried everything. Beginning to think there is a slight short somewhere as others and my previous W510 did not do this!

The problem appears to be widespread across other laptop brands, too. It happens with Vista or Win 7 installed. Here is more info --> http://social.answers.microsoft.com/For ... 593d92cc8e

I hope someone fixes it.

underclocker wrote:The problem appears to be widespread across other laptop brands, too. It happens with Vista or Win 7 installed. Here is more info --> http://social.answers.microsoft.com/For ... 593d92cc8e

I hope someone fixes it.

I do not think so. Your problem, in the above URL, is loss of power while your unit is in hibernation.

Mine is stone cold OFF!