Updated BIOS, battery life now only lasts an hour. (NX570XL)

Updated my BIOS, and now my battery life is only 1 hour, even on "Power Saver" mode. My laptop is a Gateway NX570XL.

Updating my BIOS is the only thing I could really attribute this to.

Is this common? After the update, I noticed a high pitch frequency coming from the CPU--- before the BIOS update, this would only happen when I wasn't plugged-in.

After doing some research, I found out the updated BIOS may have changed the "processor cycle schedule" or something, of the Core2Duo. To make it more energy efficient.

Doesn't seem like it's done ME any good.

 

have you tried stepping back from that bios update ?

what happens when you install the previous bios? anything back to normal ?
if so you should stick with the older bios.

 

I haven't reverted back to the older BIOS yet. That would stink if a *new and improved BIOS* is the reason... BAHH!

I like having everything up to date... makes me feel good.

 

if you want to know if the bios is the culprit, your first choice is reverting back.

sometimes even new and *improved* things are not as good as you might want them to be.

good luck mate.

 

Thanks bud.

 

Okay, an update:

1.) Unfortunately, I don't know how to revert back to my old BIOS.

2.) I spoke to a Gateway technician online, and he suggested I recalibrate my battery by going into the BIOS settings. It took about an hour and a half. No change.

3.) I went back to Gateway support, and the technician told me that the new BIOS probably damaged the battery and I need to buy a new one.

He also said there is no way to revert back to my old BIOS.



What do all of you make of my situation? Is a damaged battery really the culprit?

 

I think its the Bios, not the battery.
There is probably a way to revert back to your old Bios but its highly not recommended.

 

Wait, they are going to make you buy a new battery because their own software sabotaged yours??? They better pay for it, and you better raise hell w/ their tech support, and their supervisors. Seems ridiculous to me.

 

Seriously bro. Pull an angry-btch and get them to buy you a new battery lol.

 

whats the bios version ?

 

You wouldn't even be just an angry b*tch, you would be a rightcheously angry b*tch. There is absolutely no way you should pay for a new battery if their own proprietary software was responsible for the problem.

 

I am not paying for the new replacement battery-- luckily I'm still under a 1-year warranty. With only 30 days left on it, so this is all for free.

I don't see how the new BIOS ruined my battery. How is that possible? And yes, it's unbelievably stupid how Gateway's OWN BIOS update did this. They don't recommend BIOS updates if they aren't needed.

So I really hope that this new battery does the trick.

What do you guys think?

If it doesn't, what should I do?! I don't have the old BIOS saved!

 

I would be checking to see if the CPU is getting into a low power state when running on battery. One way to do this is to run Windows' Performance Monitor (start > run > perfmon), selecting Performance Monitor then, for the CPU, adding a counter for the % C3 state. C3 (which for this purpose includes other low power states) means the CPU is going into a low power mode. Light usage on battery should result in the CPU being 90% or more in the C3 state.

I would also run RMClock which will enable you to see (a) the CPU performance and (b) check the actual battery capacity (you can compare this with the volts x amp-hours given on the battery label). Under

Still try to get the new battery. The existing one will have lost capacity after nearly a year.

John

 

John Ratsey,

I really appreciate the help you've given so far. I really don't know what I'm doing--- I really shouldn't have updated my BIOS.

I'm afraid that getting the new battery won't change a thing! I don't know how to read the graph, how are things looking?



Also John, I don't know if it's just me, but is it possible the BIOS is making my laptop run too hot? The bottom of my system gets so hot...might be in my head. Maybe this is why the battery only runs for 1 hour?

I'm about to download the RMClock Utility...

Update--- RMClock, at one point, showed my CPU core temp reaching 68 C!, but then it quickly went down to 51. I don't know what's going on! I was just surfing the web, nothing intense!

 

You may want to see if there is a mobile processor driver available for your CPU.

On my HP laptop, it's the CPU driver in Windows environment that controls the CPU power management.

With it, the CPU runs at 800, 1600, or 2000 MHz on AC and 800, 1600 only on battery.

If the CPU driver is removed, the CPU runs at 2,000 MHz the entire time.

There maybe something similar for your Intel CPU as well on Intel website.

 

Thanks HPpavillion. I have a Core2Duo T7200, and there are no updates available on the Intel website at this time.

 

68 degrees is not abnormal, mine goes up to 71 (although that is when it's 100% loaded on both cores) , the brief spike in temperature could have been from one of vista's background processes doing what microsoft does best.. i.e. wasting your resources, maybe the indexer.

 

68 is respectable, my T7200 has range from 52-66 it will hit 70 when my X1450 OC and at max load but other then that it seems reasonable. Rite now 57 *i just played AOE3 so its resting*

 

Glad to see that you got perfmon working. One minor detail I omitted to mention is to change the colour in the properties of the % C3. Anyway, it looks credible that the top line is % C3 since that line drops when the other line (CPU usage) goes up. My conclusion is that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the CPU management.

If you've got RMClock running then the battery details page will also show the power discharge rate when running on battery. 10W (10000mW) or a bit more is a very low value typical of an ultraportable, 15W or a bit more for a medium-sized machine with integrated graphics and a dim backlight, and 20W or more for a machine with dedicated graphics. Battery capacity in Watt-hours divided by power drain in Watts gives run time in hours. So, by looking at run time and power drain you can check the actual battery capacity. Unhealthy batteries can dive from being half-full to empty in a few minutes.

The other thing to check on RMClock's monitoring page is the CPU speed and voltage.

John

 

Thanks Graviator, ChinMonkie, and HpPavilion for relieving my processor worries.

John--- I captured some screenshots of the battery. It looks like the discharge rate is way too high. This was in Vista's power saving mode:




Window's Perfmon.exe has their own utility too:



What can I do now to correct the power discharge rate--- is it possible?

 

Have you poked around in BIOS menu yet? There might be max performance/max battery option somewhere.

 

I'll try that now. Maybe it'll have something about battery discharge...

Update:

No dice. Nothing in the BIOS menus about changing battery settings. Unless John has further advice for me, I guess I'll have to wait and see if the new battery solves the problem.

 

Hey, I just scanned the thread, but might have missed it. How long have you had this battery?

On the 2nd to last image you posted, the "fully charged capacity" is only half of the "designed capacity", which again, I might be wrong, but to me it seems that it only charges to half it's original capacity. This might be due to the battery's age (my old laptop which is a wee bit shy of 4 years old only lasts 1-2 min on a full charge when it used to last 3 hours). Or in some way the battery got damaged, too cold, too hot, or something the bios did to it. So, if you have had your battery for a year or 2, and you mostly use ur laptop on battery, it could be normal. 1 hour isn't HORRIBLE... Hopefully gateway will replace it though :-D

 

Thanks for scanning the thread Gravitator.

My laptop is 11 months old. I hardly use the battery--- I basically always have myself plugged in. I just read though, that if I'm always plugged in, I should remove the battery to avoid over-charging it.

When I get the new battery, I'm definitely going to only insert it only when I need to.

Sometimes I leave my laptop on for hours, without going into sleep mode because I stream video off of it to by XBOX360. The heat could have effected the battery...

I guess I didn't take care of it. Plus we can't forget the new BIOS being a factor...

 

21W power drain is not seriously excessive. What are your hardware specs?

As already noted, RMClock shows that your battery capacity has seriously dropped. I consider 25 to 30% loss of capacity reasonable for one year and this is well above that. So follow up with Gateway about getting a replacement.

There is a small possibility that the new BIOS messed up the battery calibration. One problem with Vista is that it does't make it easy to run the battery until empty because you can't set the critical battery action to do nothing. The workaround is to run this command:

Sometimes, if the calibration is messed up then there is considerable time remaining when the battery thinks it is empty. However, keep that fix for the future. Get the new battery.

As for tweaking the power consumption, you can start by reading this thread.

John

 

Here ya go John

 

FINAL UPDATE:

I received my free battery from Gateway today.

My battery life is back to normal levels at 3 and 1/2 hours!!!

With 25 days left on my original warranty, I am now seriously thinking of extending the service. Thank you all for your help, especially John and HpPavilion.

From now on, I won't have the battery inserted when I'm on A/C power.

 

Are they making you return your bad battery or did you already?

If you still have it, you've already tried calibrating it, right?
1. Fully charge.
2. Go to power settings and set for "always on" and disable low battery alarm
3. Let the computer "run out of gas" completely
4. Recharge
5. Check runtime again

 

Yes, I have to send the dysfunctional battery back. Do you have any tips on maintaining the battery life of my new battery?

 

Good news about the replacement battery.

1. With the ATI X1400 on board you will be lucky to get the power drain below 20W. Probably the biggest reduction can be achieved by going into the ATI control panel and tweaking the GPU power options. You can also search through the devices in Device Manager and see which offer power management options and try fiddling with those settings. Also turn off the wireless card if you don't need it when running on battery.

2. How to achieve the best battery lifetime? It is said that the life depends on charge cycles, so try to avoid small discharge / recharge events (most BIOSes don't trigger a recharge until the charge level is several % down from full). The deep discharge, as noted above, can also sort out calibration problems. You may need to do it a couple of times.

John