Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

How long did you sleep?
It sound like something was preventing your computer to sleep. Remove any BIOS password, ensure that you have the latest driver version and BIOS, remove any USB stick from the system.
Look at system event for any error related to this. Do you have anything wrong?

You can diagnose your system sleep system, by doing the following:
1- Open Command prompt as real administrator
2- type: powercfg -ENERGY, and his ENTER

A report HTML file will be created at: C:\Windows\system32\energy-report.html

 

Well, the battery ran for almost 6 hours of use where I wasn't trying to conserve power. It has recharged to 100%. I'll partly run it down, hibernate and restart and see if it reads the gauge correctly this time.

As for the wobble, it is about 1mm in the direction where the battery slides on and off.

John

 

So you are saying you websurfing using wireless for 6 hours only, and you have the Intel GPU? and this is a new battery, right?
If I had 8 hours and half (I ignore the first day where I got 9 hours with my battery)... I must say your battery is faulty. You should at least get minimal under Vista/XP 7 hours and half like I do (which is a used battery ~30% wear level, Nvidia GPU).

 

OK , i think work in vista , and later upgrade to win7 .

I'm not like vista ..... but win7 come early.

 

I was making no attempt to conserve power. The power drain was generally in the range 13-18W. 85Whr / 6 hours = 14W average, so this is consistent.

Anyway, I have powered down the computer, removed the battery, etc. Then restarted on battery and it the power gauge is still giving sensible readings. So it looks like a temporary glitch.

John

 

Hello,

I've just completed the install of Windows7 RC on my E6400. The only device (so far) that doesn't seem to be working any more is the on-board SmartCard reader. Does anybody know where to search for updated (even beta-) drivers?

Thank you

 

I think the driver for the SmartCard reader is in the security drivers package.

 

Many things can wake a sleeping computer. The event log should reveal what happened during the night. You can stop a lot of wake-ups by going through the devices in Device Manager and disabling "all this device to wake the computer".

I wasn't just websurfing (and Firefox with 30 tabs open uses some power when doing nothing). 1/2 of watching TV (and left the tuner plugged in, which takes some power) and doing various other normal tasks with the display on mid-brightness. I am more interested in the 6 hours of (my) normal usage. Seeing how long I can stretch the battery for can wait until I have my SSD in operation.

John

 

I found out that it was actually the RTC (real time clock), which was waking the computer up at night.

Any idea on how to fix this?

----

Figured it out. Turns out I had automatic updates set to install at 3AM thus the computer would wake when the RTC told it to. I simply changed the setting to have the computer notify me.

 

Yesterday I did a deep discharge on my 6 cell battery. I expected it to have a reduced reported capacity after the opportunity to recalibrate itself, but the capacity actually increased from ~49Whr to ~54Whr. That, if true is only 5% wear over 11 months.

John