T-42 Battery Drain on Standby: 15% an hour?!

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Aristotle11 · #1 Post by **Aristotle11** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 2:15 am

Hi,

What should I do?

I am on the go a lot and use standby throughout the day. But my T42 loses all its battery life in about 6-7 hours of standby (from 100% to 0%).

My wife has an X-31 that loses about 1-2% an hour, my dad an R-51 that loses 1-2% an hour, and my old R-32 lost just 1-2% an hour. My "fancy" T-42 loses 15% power/hour on stanby! That is not much better than how much battery life it loses on Super Power Saver (at 20-25% drain per hour).

My guess is that if I call IBM, they will tell me this is normal and not fix it, but I know it's not. The machine is under waranty for a few more months. It makes my T-42 very hard to use since I'm on the go all day and need standby to last.

Should I call IBM and ask them to change the motherboard, the battery, or what (maybe there is a short in the motherboard, etc.)? I think the battery is fine, since I get over 4 hours of life when I am typing, etc. I've tried different RAM with the same result. Different hard drives with the same results. My T-42 has always had this problem, but I just lived with it since I was too busy to send it in until now. I've installed all the updates (drivers, BIOS, embedded controller, etc.), but nothing worked.

What is wrong with my machine, and how do I get IBM to take care of it?

Thanks!
Aris

Plinkerton · #2 Post by **Plinkerton** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 2:22 am

I would be EXTREMELY EXTREMELY suprised if you called IBM and they said it was normal. That's horribly not normal. Mine will last DAYS AND DAYS in standby. DAYS AND DAYS!!!

Seriously though, call them up. They'll make it better.

egibbs · #3 Post by **egibbs** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 5:47 am

Are you running Linux? There is a known issue with ACPI in Linux that causes 10-15 % power drain per hour in Standby.

If this is under Windows then it's broke - probably the battery.

Ed Gibbs

Steve007 · #4 Post by **Steve007** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 7:18 am

Aristotle11 wrote:What is wrong with my machine

Your settings.

Regards,

Steve (sorry Jimbo, tsk)

IAmTheEvilest · #5 Post by **IAmTheEvilest** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 8:39 am

It might be possible that the computer is coming out of standby because some application is active.

I had something like this happen on my desktop before I discovered that one of my operations was causing the system to come out of standby. I couldn't really figure out why, but when I reimaged the computer, all was well again.

15% discharge in standby is not normal.

Aristotle11 · #6 Post by **Aristotle11** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 11:56 am

Thanks for the advice. I'll call today.

I've always run XP Pro (no linux), and have tried a million permutations in the power settings in XP and the BIOS to no affect. My question for Steve is, What other settings could it be?

Thanks,
Aris

Aristotle11 · #7 Post by **Aristotle11** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:09 pm

I called IBM. I told them that I didn't think it was the battery since I get normal drain during regular use (4 hours), but extreme drain during standby.

Nevertheless, they are sending me a new battery. Maybe there is something in a battery that can cause this problem during standby but not in normal use, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. I sure hope the new battery does the trick!

Aris

Cara · #8 Post by **Cara** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 9:44 pm

i have the same problem....

man. i JUST called IBM and they told me

"oh 15% discharge is supposed to happen"

i'm like WTF?!?!

first time i called ibm and they basically told me "live with it"

...

Aristotle11 · #9 Post by **Aristotle11** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:17 am

15%/hour is WAY too fast: 1% is typical for each of my family's other 4 thinkpads (T-40, X-31, R-32, R-51). I don't know why I'm lucky in getting a new battery. It's random I guess.

My main concern is that I really don't think the battery is what is causing the problem. It could be something more serious like a motherboard issue. But I guess the battery is the cheapest solution if it works.

Steve007 · #10 Post by **Steve007** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:54 am

Cara wrote:first time i called ibm and they basically told me "live with it"

Yes, the 'new management' are using this line all too frequently at the moment. I wanted to get a screen changed on a colleagues T30 as it was blatantly faulty and it took 3 weeks of wrangling to finally get them to concede and send a engineer out with a replacement. When he arrived all he brought with him was a replacement card that connects the system board to the screen

I'm still waiting for the replacement screen.....

We should be used to this in the UK though. IBM only tend to look after North American customers with any sort of respect. What pisses me off is that we pay vastly more money for hardware and support than our North American friends and we get a far worse deal.

Thanks IBM!

Cara · #11 Post by **Cara** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 9:18 am

after talking to four people that night, i got a battery replacement too.

I live in Canada, so they weren't much nicer to me. I felt like I wasn't talking to someone who understood english very well though. They had a thick accent and asked me to repeat everything like four times. I was bit of a newb, because I never called them and when I asked them where I could find my serial number, they sort of just gave me the "you're an idiot" vibe.

----

my CD-ROM drive has an issue with constantly showing up as a "safely remove hardware" - I spoke to one of them about it, and they told me to do a windowsupdate... i did all the windowsupdate... try again. --

----

conclusion: I don't like talking to IBM people very much.

Aristotle11 · #12 Post by **Aristotle11** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:09 pm

Success! The new battery worked.

I got the battery this morning less than 24 hours after my phone call to IBM. I put it in, charged it to 83%, and then unplugged it and put it into standby.

I took it out of standby after 46 minutes, and it was still at 83%! I used it for a minute to send an email over wireless (all using bettery only), and then put it back into standby when it was at 82%. I took it in and out of standby for an hour and a half while only using battery power, and in the end it was at 81%. Here is my "Standby Log"...

83% 11:22 am put into standby
83% 12:08 pm taken out of standby
82% 12:09 pm put into standby
82% 12:34 pm taken out of standby
82% 12:34 pm put into standby
81% 12:52 pm taken out of standby

So, in exactly an hour and a half, it lost 2% (I took it out of standby twice during that time, so the battery may have lost only 1% if I kept it in standby the whole time).

So now my T-40 behaves like all the other thnkpads in the family. Now I can be a true road warrior!

Best,
Aris

Nolonemo · #13 Post by **Nolonemo** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:29 pm

Aristotle11 wrote:Success! The new battery worked.

That's so wierd! Can anyone explain how this could have been a battery problem?

Plinkerton · #14 Post by **Plinkerton** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:54 pm

I don't know. My guess is that the battery was just depleting. It was just defective and had bad cells, (if that can happen) and they were just losing power constantly...

Glad to hear it worked though.

Aristotle11 · #15 Post by **Aristotle11** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 4:36 pm

Here is a little weird thing that happened. I left it in standby from 12:52 until 4:22 (3 and a half hours), and it went down from 81% to 70%, so it lost a little more than 3%/hour. Still, not nearly as bad as before.

But the weird thing was that it took about 30 seconds to come out of standby, instead of the usual 5 seconds.

This happened even worse with the old battery. If I had the comp on standby for a few minutes, it would come out of standby instantly, but if I had it on standby for 4 hours, it took a minute or more to come out of standby.

I didn't mention that problem when I first called IBM yesterday, but the funny thing was that THEY mentioned it to me. When I told them about the 15%/hour battery drain, they asked me if it sometimes took a long time to come out of standby. I said yes, that it did take up to a few minutes sometimes when it had been in standby a few hours. A few times it took 5 minutes, but around a minute was more common.

My old R-32 and my wife's X-31 never delayed for a minute to come out of standby, so I'm worried that there is still a problem with the T-42.

Best,
Aris

Plinkerton · #16 Post by **Plinkerton** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 4:57 pm

That's still way too much. I can leave my in standby overnight, and I'll lose maybe 2-3%.

Aristotle11 · #17 Post by **Aristotle11** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:59 pm

I did one last test. I put the T42 into 10 uninterrupted hours of standby, and it went from 94% to 84%. I can live with that. 10% over 10 hours is a lot better than 15% per hour.

The only problem I still cannot figure out is that is can take 60 seconds to come out of standby sometimes. Usually it is 5 seconds, though. I've tried bootvis, but it always takes 5 seconds when I use bootvis. Oh well, you can't win them all.

Thanks to everybody for the help!
Aris

Aristotle11 · #18 Post by **Aristotle11** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:29 pm

Another weird occurance. I put the T42 on standby for 2 hours and it went from 84% to 74%. Before I took it off standby, I picked up the T42 which had been sitting on my bed. The spot on the bed where it had been sitting on standby was very warm. An area on the bottom of the laptop was very warm. The area under the trackpad and trackpoint, and the adjoining area to the left, was the warm spot. What is just under the trackpad? I know the processor is just above it.

Something is not turning off when the thinkpad goes into standby. Nothing should be warm after 2 hours on standby. And when I lose 10% in 10 hours, and then 10% in 2 hours, something is not working right.

Aris

T-42 Battery Drain on Standby: 15% an hour?!

T-42 Battery Drain on Standby: 15% an hour?!

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