Win 10 behavior when battery is running low

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I’ve been running Win10 on my (old) laptop for about 6 months now. In the last few months I’ve noticed some problems with power management. 90%+ of the time the laptop is on my desk, plugged in. (Which I know is not ideal for battery life.) But when it’s unplugged, sometimes it has issues.

* I’ll close my laptop and put it in my backpack. When I get the laptop out hours later, sometimes it’s warm — indicating it was running with the top closed. On one occasion I got a “thermal overload” message. Obviously when it does this, the battery is much lower when I start using it.

* Recently I’ve had several cases where it was closed, but the laptop drained power until it died. Not hibernated, but ran to zero power and shut down. It did that this week with the top open & running. (Fell asleep with the laptop on my lap after Christmas eating :rolleyes:)

I never had this problem in W7. Is this a W10 issue? Do I need to change some setting? Does W10 not handle aging batteries well? According to a battery test, my battery has lost about 10% of its full capacity in the last few months.

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That sounds like the laptop isn’t going to sleep when you close the lid – I’ve seen this when Windows updates are running, what were MS thinking!
Check that your laptop is using a power setting that allows it to sleep with no activity and when the lid is closed, and that it actually sleeps.
Your battery may report it’s healthy, but may discharge rapidly at some arbitrary level, indicating a possibly faulty battery.
Even if the battery is a bit flaky you can still run OK with the right power setting.

cheers, Paul

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…I’ll close my laptop and put it in my backpack. When I get the laptop out hours later, sometimes it’s warm — indicating it was running with the top closed. On one occasion I got a “thermal overload” message. Obviously when it does this, the battery is much lower when I start using it…

You could set it to shut down when you close the lid. Go to Control PanelPower Options then click on “Choose what closing the lid does” in the left-side panel.

I’d suggest setting it to “Shut down” when on battery.

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But I don’t WANT it to shut down. I want to be able to continue my work later.

Paul T, usually it DOES go to sleep when I close it. But I’ve seen it **wake up** when the lid is closed. The fan starts spinning, the outside light goes on. Waking up when it’s closed is OK — it should do that when the battery gets low. Wake up, dump the hiberfile, shut down. But it seems to be waking up and not shutting down — or maybe waking up too late, so it runs out of juice while it’s dumping the hiberfile?

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That doesn’t explain the thermal overload, nor failing when you fell asleep. I suspect the battery is not up to scratch. Try Passmark BatteryMon – it’s free for personal use.

cheers, Paul

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Try Passmark BatteryMon – it’s free for personal use.

I finally gave BatteryMon a try, and I discovered something interesting. The battery drained steadily down to 15%, then it dropped suddenly to 3% and hibernated.

2017-01-08, 15:21:53, OK, 16%, 1.32, 762, -42390, , 9.998, -42390, 16.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:03, OK, 15%, 1.29, 694, -47208, , 9.923, -47208, 15.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:13, OK, 15%, 1.29, 694, -45676, , 9.943, -45676, 14.3%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:23, OK, 3%, 2.85, 307, 0, , 10.022, 0, 3.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:23:13, OK, 3%, 2.86, 308, 5583, , 10.588, 5583, 3.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,

That’s probably why I was seeing the “sudden death” problem. This time it dropped to 3% and was able to hibernate; other times maybe it dropped straight from 15% to “dead.” I had it set to hibernate at 7%, but it dropped right through that level.

BatteryMon thinks it’s a gen-you-wine HP battery, but in reality it’s a no-name. It’s only 18 months old — it did not age well. The original lasted over 4 years.

So I probably need a new battery. Or maybe just a new laptop. It’s 6 yrs old, and big and heavy to cart around the country…

Thanks Paul!

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Try Passmark BatteryMon – it’s free for personal use.

I finally gave BatteryMon a try, and I discovered something interesting. The battery drained steadily down to 15%, then it dropped suddenly to 3% and hibernated.

2017-01-08, 15:21:53, OK, 16%, 1.32, 762, -42390, , 9.998, -42390, 16.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:03, OK, 15%, 1.29, 694, -47208, , 9.923, -47208, 15.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:13, OK, 15%, 1.29, 694, -45676, , 9.943, -45676, 14.3%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:22:23, OK, 3%, 2.85, 307, 0, , 10.022, 0, 3.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,
2017-01-08, 15:23:13, OK, 3%, 2.86, 308, 5583, , 10.588, 5583, 3.0%, , , , , , , , , , , ,

That’s probably why I was seeing the “sudden death” problem. This time it dropped to 3% and was able to hibernate; other times maybe it dropped straight from 15% to “dead.” I had it set to hibernate at 7%, but it dropped right through that level.

BatteryMon thinks it’s a gen-you-wine HP battery, but in reality it’s a no-name. It’s only 18 months old — it did not age well. The original lasted over 4 years.

So I probably need a new battery. Or maybe just a new laptop. It’s 6 yrs old, and big and heavy to cart around the country…

Thanks Paul!

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I bought one of those cheapo batteries once and checked it against the free version of HWMonitor which showed it already had 4% wear, so I demanded a refund.

Hit the SETUP • ENGLISH button down on the left – http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

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FWIW I ran HWMonitor and I don’t see any battery stats…

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FWIW I ran HWMonitor and I don’t see any battery stats…

This may seem a silly question – but you do have the battery installed ?

This is what it shows for my worn battery.

46392-TmsBat

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Yes the battery is installed. 🙂 But I don’t have the “Capacities” section you have.

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That’s strange – have you tried uninstalling the battery in Device Manager then rebooting or Action/Scan for hardware changes to reinstate ?

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Just tried it — uninstalled, Action/Scan, restart HWmon. No change.

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I don’t have an explanation as HWMon worked on a cheap Chinese battery for me.

Try this one which will give you similar info – http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/battery_information_view.html

The wear level is what is left – not how much it has degraded by.

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Nirsoft also thinks it’s an HP battery. In fact it thinks it’s an LI4402a, which is totally the wrong type of battery. I’m guessing the battery lies, because it’s definitely not HP or LI4402a. There are no identifying markings inside or out, just a serial number.

46417-BatteryInfo

46418-Battery

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So it’s a little over 21% worn.

While I have my battery in all of the time in case there’s a power outage, I’m on AC and I shutdown and switch off when not in use.

On the odd occasion I run just on battery I’ll get the 10% warning and a final warning to change power at 5%.

Mine is a Toshiba branded battery, so perhaps it’s because of the quality of yours that it’s acting in the way it does.

You usually only get what you pay for.

Shortly after buying my cheapo, I came across a Google blog about a cheap Chinese battery exploding in the laptop and it was bought from what seemed like the same supplier I’d bought mine – so it never got used.

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