The official VAIO Z battery drain thread

wow! that is just wrong!

 

At this point, I agree with everyone that trying to make this a bad publicity situation is the way to go, it's the only way Sony is going to listen.

I have emailed several review sites requesting someone take up the charge on this issue, even pointing them to this thread, but to no avail. However, I think if more of us make the effort to send similar emails and point them to this thread, we might actually spark some interest in the issue.

I suggest emailing an editor at each of the following as I have done:
Anandtech.com
CNET.com
Laptopmag.com
PCMag.com
NotebookReview.com

I have also gone to the Better Business Bureau website for Sony:
Sony's BBB
And I clicked here: http://newyork.bbb.org/consumers/ to file a complaint.

I suggest you do the same. The complaint I filed was on the basis of the product being defective. Since the product is marketed as a mobile device, the battery not holding its charge when shut down makes it truly a defective product in the mobile space.

We can whine on here all day and re-hash the same ideas of why this is a problem, but unless each of us gets mad enough to make a complaint to the BBB and review websites, we're just lazy complainers.

 

What about producing one on Youtube? Seems most people check the videos of products out before purchasing. I'm sure a lot of people would put 5 stars on a youtube the exposes Vaio notebooks flaws. I, for sure, will.

 

Good start. However, I bet non of those people you emailed will reply. They would not risk their relations with Sony because of a notebook. BBB is basically tied by Sony's specifications of the product. Now when they have released a statement, saying the drain is a feature, not a bug - it is a specification. The most BBB can do is to force Sony put this in small print when someone orders Z from them.

It looks like the problem is much bigger than it appears, and would require large financial expenses on Sony's side to fix it, as the Z is just one of many other models affected.

 

let me add another case to the issue

been using a brand new FW465J/H for a few months now. i keep my battery maxed at 50% to preserve battery life (so technically, a full charge for me, is at 50%). when i turn off the computer and then unplug the AC cord, the very next day when i come home from work, the computer is almost completely dead.

it boots up with the power indicator already blinking...then barely gets to the desktop before it automatically shuts down due to low battery.

almost 50% in one day??? this is really starting to annoy me. and ive tried killing the ibsmgr process too. same result

 

I might be overly optimistic here but I swear my battery has been draining a lot less slowly after updating the Intel Driver to win7 version...would that make sense? Had Win7 for past mth but didn't update the Intel Driver til few days ago

 

What driver is that? did you use vaio update 5?

 

filed a complaint with BBB.

 

I downloaded the New Mobile Intel 4 under VIDEO (11/23/09)....
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNSR220JH&SelectOS=49

*it did eliminate the crashes I was getting with my new Zune as well

 

You mean this driver?
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNSR220JH&upd_id=5271&os_id=49

I've noticed you have SR, I'm wondering if this is the same for Zs

 

I did my own testing on my new Z. This past Tuesday night, I fully charged the laptop. I removed the battery completely and left it for 2 days. I then put back the battery and tried to power on the laptop; it wouldn't. I then used the power plug and powered on the laptop. I quickly disconnected the power plug as Windows 7 is trying to boot. Once fully booted, I checked the battery and it had 98% left. I hope Sony does try to find a fix as it seems to be something with the Z which draining the battery despite it being completely off.

 

I just bought a Sony Vaio VGN-FW560F a few days ago from Best Buy. I noticed something was wrong right away, as when I put mine in Hibernate at a full charge, I lose 60-80% over night, thats aproximately 7-8 hours. I thought it was a bad battery, so I took it in and got a new battery swapped into it, last night I went from 66% to 21%.. Better then the first couple times, but still very unrealistic.

Do you think this is going to be an issue that will eventually be addressed? As I love this laptop, the battery issue will not work for me being in school full time. I am just trying to decided on whether or not I should swap it for a different brand or not. Any info or opinion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

If you NEED long battery life, I would exchange it while you still can...SONY seems to be dismissing the issue vs trying to fix it so I don't think it will happen anytime soon...I can "deal" with it as it is mainly plugged in at home

 

Hm, 2% per 2 days is not that bad actually with Vaios. Usually it's dead in 2-3 days

Fivestones - Sony will never fix that thing after publishing that press release saying it's a "feature", not a bug, so forget it. They might release some bios fixes silently, without notifying the public to avoid legal actions against them, and so no one will point fingers at them saying SONY WERE LYING, when they made the press release (they certainly were, but hey, it's Sony!).

Anyhow, I'm still convinced there is no real "drain", but a sensor bug, that tells the battery is used, when it's not. The censor is reset when AC is connected, or if you power on with it plugged in.

 

I'm dittoing with xer47. My indicator says 75% when it boots up (I charge it to 80%) if I turn it on after 8 hours of shut-down. It stays at 75% for about 20 minutes, with the time-remaining indicator gradually increasing about 20 or 30 minutes during that time.

That plus the fact that the Z seems to charge up extremely quickly. Say I had 75% remaining. It would finish charging to 80% in about 2 minutes. If I use the machine to down to 10% (me being mobile) and I start from 65%, it takes about 2 and a half hours to charge back up to 80%. Though I have to say that W7 battery indicator seems to be more-off than the Vista indicator.

I can use the Z for just over 5 hours non-stop from 75%, which I think is pretty good for something that is over a year old.

 

here's something interesting. i dont know if it has been mentioned but XP SP2 use to have a battery drain bug..

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...Windows-XP-SP2-Laptop-Battery-Drain-Bug.shtml

 

I wish it were that simple, but if I leave my battery in and put my laptop away for a week (which I do as this is a secondary PC for me), it literally will not power on via the battery, it is completely drained. I can plug it in to power it up but the indicator reads 2% and it takes the expected amount of time to recharge.

 

I believe it is not an indicator bug, at least it's not only that.
Because there IS a faint high-pitch sound coming from the bottom of the laptop even when it is shut down/hibernated (and power cord disconnected). Obviously this sound has to have a power source - and the only power source in a laptop I can think of is a battery.

 

This is completely just a conspiracy theory but I think it might be related to SONY having that "cool" green ring around the Power button...

 

It looks like that sound is coming from the memory door.

 

Ok I do not have my Sony CW Laptop yet to test this with...

But can someone do this!?

1) Charge to 100%
2) Remove battery and with DMM test voltage.
3) Put back in, shutdown computer and leave for 12+ hours
4) After 12+ Hours remove battery and test voltage again.

This should establish if the battery is ACTUALLY draining, and how by much instead of relying on what could simply be poor software monitoring.

 

i'd test voltages across pins if someone had a pinout of the battery connector...but that might involve breaking a battery apart and looking at what is printed on the circuit board

 

I'll post back here by Tuesday to let you know what I find out... The leads on my MM cables aren't small enough to fit the small holes on the battery. So tomorrow morning I'm going to go buy some smaller leads.

 

^ Right that is what I meant. There should be no reason to need to take the battery apart. There will always be a + and - pin on the connector otherwise how does the laptop receive the power!?

XGX2007: Use a thin screwdriver to probe it! You must have one around the house if you have some basic tools. Sometimes a little ingenuity works great...so try anything that is conductive.

Also you have it set on Amp's...You want voltage (V).

 

Oh, I know, that was just a random pic showing the leads... but I have some other stuff that I need smaller leads for anyway, and while I do have a small flathead screwdriver, I'd rather wait till morning because I've now got someone calling me to bed..lol It's 2:50

 

um, of course there are +,- pins on the output...the question is which ones are which (there are more than 2 outputs).

I don't want to accidentally connect the + pin to the data or CLK pin and fry the batteries onboard circuitry...

Also, for anyone doing the test, the best way to ensure reliable results would be the following:
1. charge battery to 100%
2. remove battery while windows is running, measure voltage
3. re-insert battery
4. shutdown windows
5. wait 8-12 hours
6. take out battery, measure voltage
7. re-insert battery, start up windows
8. see what it says the battery drain is.

Also, something else someone could try...When you turn on your PC and notice battery drain, remove battery from the laptop, and then re-insert it. See if the windows power meter resets and registers a more accurate reading!

Also, i can't actually test this stuff yet, since the computer isn't mine (my partners) and she can't afford to have it crash/die in the next 3 weeks. Sorry!

 

Huh? No voltmeter is going to short the pins together that you are testing unless you have it in resistance test (ohm) mode. I am not sure why you have such a fear.

Gary

 

You are not going to fry anything with a DMM whatever you test with. I promise.

 

ok....yeah your right....i am a complete idiot lol.

Was a rough day and wasn't thinking straight haha * embarrassed*

 

You only need ONE exception to refute a claim.

And it's not even the only exception. How about when you create a task that wakes up the computer to do backup? If the machine was truly OFF, the backup would be missed.
Similar for other subsystems, including the sound card (which doubles as a modem) and (depending on the model) the lid sensor.
All of these require the SMBus to be powered, which it is in Hibernation, but not when mechanically off.

The ACPI specs refer to four global states, G0 Working, G1 Sleeping (S1-S4), G2 Soft Off (S5) and G3 Off.
In addition, each device can have up to four power states, from D0 to D3.

The Vaio Z doesn't have a user reachable G3 state (it doesn't have a mechanical switch, but a powered switch), so G2 is as low as it gets. The power drain for G2 is negligible. Hibernation is still G1/S4.

See http://www.acpi.info/ for more details.

 

Um, no, it doesn't. Check it yourself (toothpick, feather, your choice).

The fan is off, but the SMBus and certain devices that can wake the computer have power.

 

The task to wake the machine does NOT require power. What it does require is a CMOS clock that supports this feature. The clock has an alarm that can be set to wake the machine. That only requires the CMOS clock to have power.

The lid sensor does not function to wake the machine from hibernation, nor is there any reason to power the modem/sound card.

I can hibernate my FZ model for days and it has NO power loss whatsoever. I have wake on lan turned off.

Sure the laptop may have no G3 state. But each device can have a D3 state (off).

Gary

 

So let's agree that Wake on LAN will cause battery drain, but everyone experiencing the drain has turned this off and it still happens.

The fans are not running when it is turned off. even so, the tiny fan would not account for 10% battery drain if it was running all the time. And the crap about why it's quieter when in hibernation is absolute bullcrap. The only way it can be quieter and be on is if you apply less voltage to the fan (thus have it spin slower). As a result you have even less power usage than the minimal amount it would raw at full speed, thus not accounting for 10% battery drain.
Anyway, that arguement was pointless since anyone with an IQ over 10 knows the fan is not on when the computer is shutdown or hibernated.

As for the statements about devices drawing power because the computer is not "off", please enlighten me what devices/feature improvement i get from having a device always on inside the Vaio Z? My Dell XPS M1530 never shows battery drain, so what feature in the vaio is using power?

The point is that some device inside the vaio is using power WHEN IT SHOULD NOT BE. or at least it is using more than it should.

So can we stop debating whether the battery drain is a feature? It's either a device using power when it shouldn't, or something wrong with the way the battery reports it's charge level.

If you don't think the battery drain is real, then there isn't really much point posting here. You obviously don't have a problem...

 

You have a System Management Bus (SMBus) running that's capable of telling other devices on the system to sleep or wake up.

Let's say your laptop is hooked up to a plain old telephone line for faxes. Then it rings. The sound card (which does double duty as a modem) detects the ring, and sends out an event on the SMBus that a ring has been detected. The SMBus then wakes up the rest of the system (if WOR is enabled), so you can receive the incoming fax. That's considered a feature, and one you can turn on/off in the device manager.
Similar for several other devices that are allowed to wake the computer from deep sleep (S4).

 

Argg is this guy who is trying to convince everyone that this is a feature from Sony paid??

If I turn OFF (no sleep, no suspend, no hibernate, OFF) my computer it is *NOT* supposed to use any energy. Esp not so much that after a few days the battery is empty. FULL STOP.

Please, whoever here is paid by Sony to make others believe that this is a feature. Go and get rid of your ignorance somewhere else, thanks.

 

I thought you guys would think this is interesting. Looks like Sony is not the only one that ever had this issue. These are pretty old posts, but Toshiba and HP are both mentioned.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-517691.html

 

Hello everybody!

If you want to know the exact capacity of
your battery you can use HWMonitor:
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

A very usefull tool, and no installation needed!


I have a VGN-Z31WN (European-Modell)
As OS I used XP, Vista 32+64 bit and Win7 64bit.
I experienced battery drain on all of them.

Hopefully there will be a fix for this problem soon...

 

Wrong again. The sound card will NOT double as a modem. The sound card inside most modern notebooks is built on the Azalia HD Audio spec laid down by Intel, which places it on the HD Audio bus, but that's as close as the two come. Another reason why this is a moot topic is the fact that most newer Vaio's (the ones this thread is about) don't have 56k modem hardware. I KNOW the CW series doesn't, and the new Z's don't as well. Matter of fact I don't even think it's a build to order option anymore. Also, did you not read ScuderiaConchiglia's post?!

Lets try to stay on topic here, as this point isn't of any real relevance. Especially for most people, because they don't use the WOL or WOR feature anyways.

 

Thankyou for the enlightening post... /sarcasm

Yes, devices "can use power" to wake up "if enable in device manager to do so". However, i have been through and disabled all these as the first step in trying to solve the battery drain. Hell i even disabled all non-essential devices that could be "on" while the computer is off.

Further more, most other laptops have the wake features you describe in your post and do not lose 10-15% per day as the sony FAQ states is normal.

So again i repeat my question: What is in the vaio z that is not in other laptops that draws this huge amount of power when the computer is in S5?


Anyway, has anyone had any luck with measuring voltages to see if the battery is draining or if it is a level meter issue?

Has anyone tried my suggestion of leaving the battery to drain from fully charged over night, removing the battery, starting the vaio on AC power and then inserting battery once windows has loaded?

 

I have a suggestion, which I don't know know if any of you have tried yet, or is even listed in this thread (lol. i'm lazy and didn't search). But could you guys try to disable USB selective suspend from the Windows 7 Power Management control panel? I'm interested to see how this effects battery life.

 

But for a system without a hardware power switch, the only way to turn it OFF is to remove the battery. Else there will be a trickle charge -- if there wasn't, you wouldn't be able to turn the machine on!

Now that we all agree on.

Stop attacking straw men. No one here has said that excessive battery drain is a feature. But some battery drain is to be expected (in addition to the normal discharge of the battery itself), because S4 and S5 states aren't really OFF, only almost off. It should not deplete your battery in a few days, no.

FWIW, my Z does not deplete much -- I have had it shut "off" for a week, and it was still relatively close to full afterwards. (Note that I shut it down with a real power off, not the "soft off" that Windows gives you by default. In Linux terms, shutdown -P instead of shutdown -H) If I let it hibernate, it will lose slightly more battery, but not much.

To recap: No, your battery shouldn't deplete within days. But neither should you expect NO battery use, especially not from hibernation (S4) which isn't the same as OFF. Losing 10% in a week might be normal, but much more, no.

 

Yes, a tiny tiny amount of power will be used. We're talking a few mAh not 50mAh. It should be so small that it is not registered as a drop when it is left unplugged for 10 hours.

There is also the fact that it has been reported that unplugging your battery for 1 minute after putting the computer in S4 or S5 stops the computer from draining power over the period of inoperation. Explain that one?

(no doubt you will say, well the WOL,WOR,etc features won't work if you do that...I DON'T WANT THEM TO WORK! I just want the computer to enter S4 or S5 and use as little power as possible!)

 

Interesting, I actually have not heard this. From what you say, it seems that when you un-plug it like that, it activates the S6 state with the C2D. S6 is the "Enhanced Deeper Sleep" by Intel. It responds to stimuli, and senses whether or not to enable S6 by determining various power requirements. When S6 is activated, the L2 cache is flushed from the processor into memory and the processor goes into a very low power state that doesn't require it to keep the L2 cache intact. Then upon wake-up the L2 data is loaded back onto the processor and it resumes at the pre-defined p-state.

 

From some of the my personal tests with the Z, what three_pineapples says is true.

So basically, you SHUT DOWN your machine (no hibernate, no standby, SHUT DOWN by selecting it), and you remove the battery. In my case, as soon as I remove the battery off the Z, I just willy-nilly reattach it back on. And that doesn't seem to drain the battery for the duration of about 5 days. I can check this by reattaching the battery and then plugging in the AC to the Z without turning it on - the charge lamp doesn't come on. But we all should know (by reading previous posts) that the battery status chip somewhere seems iffy, sending wrong info regarding battery life to OS and possibly even the hardware (battery lights). So drain could actually still be happening once the battery is reattached, just not detected...

The curious thing though. My Z (a 2nd gen) makes a pretty quiet yet high-pitched sound when it's shut down. This sound comes from near the bluetooth module (near the power button). I'm not bragging, but I'm an audiophile and have good hearing - the sound is definetely there. Now here is the curious part. When I remove the battery, the sound stops. And when I reattach the battery, the sound doesn't come back, until the next time I start up and shut down the Z.

And another one of me findings; if I shut down the Z and leave it off with the battery attached for three or so days, and reattach the AC without turning on the Z, the battery charging lamp doesn't come on. And you boot into windows (with AC) and it says full charge. That indicates the drain ain't happening. But as above, in this test I heard the 'sound' so that seems to contradict the no-draining theory there...

So basically, something is draining the battery (the 'sound'), and my conclusion from my own personal tests pin-point towards the bluetooth module; I checked in the service manual and the only note-worthy piece of hardware near the power button that can possibily drain the battery is the bluetooth module. Though I've tried numerous drivers, settings, and whatnot to no avail.

I have to say that we as end-users should have the freedom to choose how we use our machines that we bought with our own money, and our own free will, expecting a good quality product. We each all have preferences, and in this case we all wish to be able to change the power states (if that works at all that is). Some machines let you change S_ states in BIOS, and I hear it's possible in Windows (but it doesn't work in the OS).

 

Ok, so my tests were inconclusive. My CW doesn't suffer from battery drain so my measurements on my machine were pretty much normal. The way I tested it was to start with the measurements on my previous post, and my results pretty much came as no suprise as I only lost 2% of total battery capacity. While my notebook was still on, I flipped it over and popped the battery off, then tested it with a Fluke 87 III type meter. I then put the battery back in and watched as windows re-recognized the battery and said it was charged. I then put it to sleep, making sure to see the pulsing amber light indicating sleep mode. I then unplugged the machine for 12 hours. Upon opening the lid and waking windows it registered a 2% drop in battery capacity. After opening the lid and getting battery approximations, I immediately shut the machine down and pulled the battery, and it showed virtually little change from the initial measurements. It was exactly in line with the Windows estimation. Questions?

 

"The offical VAIO Z battery drain thread" was started for the Zs which do have a modem, and it isn't a discrete modem, but emulated[*] on the Conexant sound card. So I think it's very relevant.

[*]: There hasn't been a laptop with a discrete modem for almost ten years -- they're all "winmodems" or "HSP", i.e. software driven sound cards and not modems.

 

If you'll read what I said a little more closely, I said the newer z's and the CW's. I know the older ones have them, and they run across the HD audio bus on the intel and AMD chipsets, but the modems in these notebooks are a physical piece of hardware that you can actually take out of the notebook and NOT have anymore. Conexant is not an audio card or chip manufacturer, but it's rather the HARDWARE company that makes the piece of HARDWARE that's called a modem.

And that's all I'm saying on this. Inflame the topic further if you must.

 

I must, because you are posting something that isn't true.

First of all, my apologies to other readers here. Please bear with me, because this post does contain info that's directly relevant to power drain on the Z, and even contains a few solutions.

(Re modems, you're misinformed. Go to Conexant's site and check what a HSF modem really is. They'll be happy to tell you that it's an audio chip that emulates a modem through software run on the CPU.)

But anyhow, that's all beside the point -- the point is that there ARE devices in the system that ARE powered in a hibernate state, and these will contribute to battery drain when hibernating. The drain shouldn't be big enough to cause problems, but no matter what common belief is, hibernation is NOT the same as power off.

Perhaps a better example is this, which you can alll verify for yourselves:

Open a command prompt with Admin privileges.
Enter the following:
powercfg -devicequery all_devices_verbose >C:\devstat.txt

Now open this file in a text editor, and scroll down to (or search for) "Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator".

If you have a Z, it will likely show the following for this device:

Code:

      Device Power Capabilities:
                     D0 supported
                     D2 supported
                     D3 supported
                     Wake from D0 supported
                     Wake from D2 supported
      Device State Mappings:
                     S0 -> D0
                     S1 -> D2
                     S2 -> D2
                     S3 -> D2
                     S4 -> D2
                     S5 -> D3
      Derived System State Mappings:
                     S0 supported
                     S1 supported
                     S2 supported
                     S3 supported
                     S4 supported
                     S5 supported
                     Wake from S0 supported
                     Wake from S1 supported
                     Wake from S2 supported
                     Wake from S3 supported

The system states are:
Power state S0 = Fully running
Power state S1,S2 (not supported on the Z)
Power state S3 = Deep Sleep
Power state S4 = Hibernation
Power state S5 = Soft off
Power state S6 = Mechanical off

The device states are:
D0 = Fully powered
D1 = Snooze mode (rapid wake-up)
D2 = Low power (slow wake-up)
D3 = No power (off, must be reinitialized)

From the above, you can see that the Bluetooth device is in state D2 when hibernating, and D3 (off) when actually shut down. That's pretty insteresting, and means that there WILL be a power drain in hibernation that isn't there when fully powered off.

Similar for several other devices, including all the USB Root Hubs.
But don't take my word for it -- check it out for yourself. powercfg will tell you.

In order to avoid the power drain of S4 state, the computer must be shut off. And herein lies the problem. When you run Vista/W7, "shut down" from the start menu really only does an S4 without first saving the RAM to disk. For most systems, it won't make a difference, but for some notebooks, it does.
So what can you do if you run Vista/W7?

Well, you can always boot into Linux and do a "shutdown -P". Or you can reboot into BIOS, and shut down from there. Or you can remove the battery for a short while (to let the capacitors drain) -- once you plug the battery back in, it should be off.

After doing either of those, Bluetooth and USB will no longer be (low-)powered, and the battery drain will be less.


Anyhow...

powercfg can also tell you which devices you can turn off wake-up capabilities on:

powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

Note that this only will list the devices that can wake the computer up and which has that functionality enabled. It won't list the devices that are powered in deep sleep but can't wake the computer, nor those which you have disabled wake-up for, nor those that aren't user configurable. So it won't solve the problems with USB and Bluetooth still using power in S4, but it can help you find out whether you have forgotten to turn off the wake-up capabilities of a device without having to go through the device manager, one by one.

 

ok arth, you are at least making a small amount of sense...

So you are saying that "shutdown" in windows 7 goes to S4 instead of S5? That seems bizarre. Can you tell me where you found this information? (i'm genuinely interested).

If you are right, everyone experiencing battery drain should be able to get a linux live cd, and use it to do a shutdown -P, and then not see a battery drain.

If it is the bluetooth module causing the problem (as indicated by the S4 power mapping in the power data, and the fact that users report high pitched noise from the area with the bluetooth module in) why did it not fix the battery drain when I disabled the bluetooth module (noth in device manager and with the hard switch)?

While S4 may consume slightly more power than S5, there can't be many devices that have S4 => D2, S5 => D3. Most are usually S4 => D3, S5 => D3.

 

All I can say is that if a "Shutdown" in Windows 7/Vista puts the machine in a S4 state, then we have bigger problems than battery loss. As quoted from an MSDN article..

System power state S4, the hibernate state, is the lowest-powered sleeping state and has the longest wake-up latency. To reduce power consumption to a minimum, the hardware powers off all devices. Operating system context, however, is maintained in a hibernate file (an image of memory) that the system writes to disk before entering the S4 state. Upon restart, the loader reads this file and jumps to the system's previous, prehibernation location.

If a computer in state S1, S2, or S3 loses all AC or battery power, it loses system hardware context and therefore must reboot to return to S0. A computer in state S4, however, can restart from its previous location even after it loses battery or AC power because operating system context is retained in the hibernate file. A computer in the hibernate state uses no power (with the possible exception of trickle current to the power switch or system timer if the hardware supports it).

The UEFI only supplies power to the USB bus on S2 and S3, if selective suspend is enabled in the power management panel in windows. In S4 there is no power to peripherals except the power button. The CMOS handles all WOx commands and handles all wake based timers if the system supports it, and for which the CMOS has it's own re-chargeable NiMh battery attached to the motherboard.

Oh, and if you'd look at your own chart, you'd realize that there are NOT 7 S-states. There are only 6, and here they are..

S0 -> Is the working state.
S1 -> Typically termed as Standby, where it requires 2 seconds or less for normal user interaction. Less consumption than in S0 and greater than in the other sleep states. Processor clock is off and bus clocks are stopped.
S2 -> System power state S2 is similar to S1 except that the CPU context and contents of the system cache are lost because the processor loses power.
S3 -> System power state S3 is a sleeping state where the processor is OFF and some chips on the motherboard should be off as well. Only system memory is retained, and it is virtually indistinguishable from S2.
S4 -> Read above for S4 information.
S5 -> Is the Shutdown state.

And you say I'm misleading people..hah!