The official VAIO Z battery drain thread

It's useless, they're aware of it and can or will do nothing.
Just take your battery off when you shut down your computer, you'll take rid of that battery drain.

 

hmm... it didn't happen to me...
or wait 13% for more less 5 days maybe it is ok for me...

 

Samething is happening to me on my Sony S & W. I'm looking to sell them and moving back to dells. I can't even carry around my S all day, it will be dead by 7 no matter if I use it or not...

 

If you don't use it for a long period, then remove the battery : drain fixed.

 

That solution is no "fix" at all - it's just a crutch

The "long period" is in my case 3 days and i am really angry because i bought a very expensive "not mobile" device. That will also be the last sony vaio i have bought.
I had some very annoying conversation with the sony support - their offer was the try to sell me a "reduced" second battery for the normal internet-market price - and the problem is no problem because they say it's normal.

But yes - they are right - problems are normal. We should really learn to stand them and the world would be a better place

 

I was under the impression that the Z1290 will have had this battery drain issue fixed.

 

So the new VPC Z1x notebooks still suffer from this issue?

 

Anybody? I thought this was limited to VGN's...

 

Yeah, the new Z's consume a bit power constantly even when turned off. I would estimate mine is draining about 10% in 3 days when lying around and not being used. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

Ugh. Have you applied the latest VAIO updates? I'm assuming you have, but I haven't seen owners of the new Z's complain of battery drain too much.

I really want to be convinced that this machine is worth the crater in the wallet but Sony is really trying to nail this coffin shut for me with the price, abysmal support, and issues like this and screw/hinge issue. It takes a lot to keep me from scratching the itch fairly quickly when it comes to a piece of tech that I want, but Sony sure as hell isn't providing the justification I am looking for.

 

What do the VAIO software updates have to do with the battery drain when the computer is shut down?

 

Maybe Sony really is just completely -backwards compared to other manufacturers, but I had assumed that they periodically release software, driver, and potentially BIOS updates for VAIO machines. Do they not? A software update would not affect battery drain when it is shut down, but a BIOS update certainly could.

 

I found this issue on mine too.. More then 10% at 8hrs night sleep.

I was crawling around and found a tip "disable wake on timers". So I did it, charged to 100%, turned off, removed AC power and go away. After 12hrs came back, turned it on (on battery) and I had 98% remaining (i suppose 1-2% is possible to discharge druing startup). I am happy

 

Sounds right to me. Disabling Wake On Timers was one of the first things I did, and I've never had a battery drain issue.

FYI people, right click your battery icon, go to Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Advanced Power settings -> Sleep dropdown -> Allow wake timers ->Disable/Disable. You'll need to do it for each Power Plan.

 

No one care about this problem anymore? I just got my new Sony Vaio and, S&**, the battery drain still exists. The battery lost 15% - 20% per day for me.

Cant believe SONY still hav'nt fix it.

 

There are some lucky individuals (namely some select CW owners) who are not experiencing the drainage issue.

There were reports of some people turning off the WAKE-SLEEP-TIMERS and their battery drainage were down to about 1-2% a day. I tried that but the problem, as expected, still exists.

Your best bet is to get used to it. Or just take the battery off the lappie when shutting down, and use without it attached when on AC power (leaving it charged up ain't good for it in any case).

 

5ushiMonster, Glad to see you are still here. Well, should not say glad since we are all sad puppy of SONY

I tried to browse through the theard but after 2 hours and still not finished. On my way home, I had this idea which didnt see anyone mentioned in the first half of the discussion. Forgive me if this has been tested.

The Battery Care Function. Yes, I saw your comments in another thread. And I agree it doesnt make sense. But, let's see:

I did this at home

1. Turn off the Battery Care.
2. Charge the battery to fully 100% and unplug the A/C.
3. Use the computer until it is less than 100% but greater than 80%. For example, 95%.
4. Plug in the A/C, you shall see the charging light on.
5. Now turn on the Battery Care. The charging light went off (95% > 80%).
6. Turn off the Computer completely. Tried unplug, plug the A/C. The charging light was still off.
7. Now unplug the A/C.
8. And TAKE OUT the battery.
9. Wait 5 minutes (I waited 1 min)
10. Put the battery back
11. Plug in the A/C. wow. What I saw? The charging light is ON!! This means that the Battery Care setting has been wiped out. Or means that the Battery Care setting is stored in some component that need continues power!!!
12. I also checked if this setting is stored in Bios. So before I boot into windows, I pressed F2. I found that the Date and time in Bios is still 10/05/2010 and 20:35, which means Bios setting has kept.
13. Then I turned on the computer and the charging light went off once Windows is booted.

I think this means that Batttery Care Function does need power when computer is off and the setting is NOT in Bios.

I tried it twice and both were same results.

However, I still cannot sure if the power needed by the Battery Care function is large enough to cause the visible drain.

 

For your step 11, there is a complicated reason for that but I'll try explaining nonetheless. And yes, I am aware of that very issue myself (and trust me, I've tried EVERY darn possible thing to rectify this issue myself...)

The battery controller is managed by a process in Windows, and I believe by a little chip inside the battery itself as well as the BIOS. This is how VAIO machines prevent you from using Chinese-made fake / aftermarket batteries.

Let's assume you set BATTERY CARE to 80%. When you have BATTERY CARE turned on, a process in the OS will save a flag / command to the BIOS and the chip in the battery itself.
Now turn your machine off.
So if you have 80% or more charge, the battery will recognise that flag and will not charge the battery any further (notifying the BIOS interface hence no charging light).

But take out the battery with more than 80% charge and attach it back on the machine again. The battery will starting charging (and the charge light comes on).

Don't quote me on this, but that's because the flag has been erased while the battery was detached. I would have thought the BIOS battery would keep that flag alive and up but that is NOT the case. So the BATTERY CARE is a seperate function, independent of the BIOS battery and fully DEPENDENT on the VAIO's battery itself.

I say what I'm saying (above) as I've been hearing a very quiet, a very high-pitched sound when I shut my machine down with the battery attached. That sound disappears when the AC is plugged in, or when the battery is removed. And when I reattach the battery while shut-down, the sound does NOT return, which supports the above theory that the flag has indeed been lost.

The battery drain therefore COULD be the various processes that are running to maintain the BATTERY CARE function. But that then brings me to those people NOT running BATTERY CARE; why are they still experiencing drainage then?

...the plot thickens...

 

Once I disabled wake timers in windows and all wake on lan/magic packet functionality (in hacked bios) I have no battery drain issues. Lost 1% over 2 days.

 

nice

10char

 

So I was digging into the battery drain problem for the last few days. Sadly, no solution for it. However, there is one more piece of information I found.

I came across the Sony China official FAQs regarding the battery problem. Same BS info of course. But not like the US site's vague claim, they do list the parts that will drain power after shutdown. They are:

1. RTC function (what this?)
2. The power buttion
3. The monitor inside the battery

Original link(in Chinese)
SONY China Service-????????????????????

They also mentioned in the second link

SONY China Service-???????????????????????

that the battery will automatically drain power when connect to computer (without A/C) to ENSURE the safety. (???) This reminds me someone said the Sony Battery Drain started right after Sony Battery exlosion incident in 2006. Maybe the battery drain is the Sony's solution to exlosion?

Yes. I know the above information would not solve the problem. But, at current situation, knowing a little bit more info may help us to solve it in the future.

 

RTC = Real Time Clock. But that makes no sense as it is usually part of the CMOS and powered by a separate battery.

Gary

 

I noticed with my Vaio SR that putting the WIFI switch to OFF position solved the problem... If I leave the switch to on I loose a 16 % of battery in two hours....

 

I dont know if this is the place to post as there are a million threads on this subject and not much solution. anyways, i have hope on my machine today. my proposed fix is that after comp is shutdown/hibernated, unplug the power cable and then remove the battery for 30 seconds. then place the battery back on. before, my battery level would reportedly be way lower after a few hours of inactivity or even worse... not even turn on after a day. today, i left my laptop off for about 12 hours and it shows only loss of 3%. i can attribute that to starting up the laptop. I will continue to play with this and report back.

 

hi all,
i have a question, will leaving the charger in the laptop damage the battery? (ie, constant charging/drain)

Is there any difference in leaving the AC in while the computer is on or off?

thanks

 

Leaving the charger in doesn't damage battery's. Heat / usage does. I have mine plugged in at home all the time, only when i go out i use battery most of the time and it still works great.

When my laptop was home for 3 weeks (connected to charger) i just unplugged it once a week (or 1,5 week, can be months probably) or so and use it till at like 5%. And then back on charger, should do the trick to keep it ''active and running'' xD.

 

Go to Control Panel > Power Options and then go to the Advanced Settings of each option (Performance, Balance and Power Saver) and from the "Sleep" drop-down menu, turn off the "Wake Timers" for all modes. I still have a hard time believing that the issue is completely solved but it is! I put my Sony VAIO VPCF134FX/B to sleep, on battery power only, with 100% charge. When I reopened my laptop 4 hours later, charge was at 99%. Before, there was a difference of 20%-30% within 3-4 hours.

 

Could you try that with a full SHUT-DOWN?
I found that 'sleep', since it still consumes some power for the BIOS functions (eg, the sleep light, turn-on-when-lid-is-opened function etc etc), the battery drain is kept at a minimum.

The drainage comes when only in SHUT-DOWN and HIBERNATE for me. I have WAKE TIMERS disabled due to what this machine is used for. Yet I still get drainage, around 5-10% every 12 hours or so. But then, some could argue my 'drain' is actually the battery meter not being accurate when the machine boots into Windows from a shut-down state.

 

I tried and I get 4-6% after 3-4 hours with full shut down but I think that's normal considering the fact that my laptop is pretty much a beast consumer of charge in terms of specs; backlit keyboard, the VAIO's green "on" light, 16.4 inch monitor, i7 processor and etc. I assume that 4-6% is acceptable, after all it is a full boot-up. If you turn an iPhone on and off twice or thrice, you might have less than half the charge left over. I'm just very happy that I finally resolved this. 4-6% is MUCH MUCH better than from 20-30% up to 90% for 7 hours.

 

This is a good question.
I bought My Vaio VGN-Z820G in January 2010 with win 7. There was no battery issue. I only upgraded Windows software for over a year an a half. This past spring I used Vaio care for the first time updating Vaio drivers and alike. As a result of the upgrade I am now seeing a 15% drain per day when off and unplugged. Six days to a dead battery. Wake timers are disabled they were enabled, but this seem to make no difference, if you remove the battery from the notebook for over a week, there is no drain at all about 2%. This drain issue cannot be good for the battery! Battery care is not enabled. Currently my only solution is to remove the battery which will have other reliability issues in the future. I am seriously contemplating backing up the data and reformatting the drive and reloading the OS so I can get the original Sony drivers which did not seem to have the issue. I wish Sony was actually listening but since they gave me this link View Document when I reported the issue, our concerns are going unanswered. This was my third Vaio, and probably last due to this issue.
Addition: Dec 18, the computer was not used for a month and the battery was removed just after it was shut down in November. After booting the computer the battery level is at 70%, this is about a 1% per day.

 

I probably missed something as I don't frequent these forums too often these days. But the VGN-Z can work with VAIO Care? I thought that was only for machines with the VAIO CARE button.

I'm due for a OS reinstall due to Windows going stale on me. Well, that plus numerous Vaio hardware functions have stopped working (battery care borks up, lid actions not functional). I'll try installing updated drivers / crucial hardware apps then; so far I've only been using the ones that were released by Sony when W7 first came out (and they worked fine minus the battery drainage). But apparently Sony went and updated them earlier this year.

Incase this is relevant. My Z26 came with Vista Business x86 from the factory. And that had drainage issues too.

 

Yes, with the exception of this battery issue it is a decent piece of SW that fixes system performance issues as well as updating SW and BIOS. This is where I think I was too willing to update the BIOS, and now I think I am stuck with this battery issue.

 

I tried the following things before going to hibernate, nothing worked .

• Disable Wake-up timers
• Disallow all devices to wake the computer
• Update Audio Drivers (realtek.com)
• Update Wireless drivers (Atheros.cz)
• Remove Vaio Event Manager
• Disable Battery management
• Remove AC-power before hibernate
• Remove AC-power after hibernate

I will report back if I find something that does work.

 

So; I contacted Sony Support; they told me to remove "System that meets Microsoft ACPI" from the Device Manager and restart a couple of times. It didn't help for me ... instead I sold it second hand, sorry.

 

were did you find the magic packets/wol setting in hacked bios?

 

I seem to have a related, but separate problem. I put my computer to sleep one day and turned it on after about 2 hours. Did whatever I was going to do and did a shutdown. Next day it was still plugged in and when I turned it on It shows no batteries present. Anyone have any ideas. If it is on connected to AC, and I remove the plug it turns off. It really fails to even see the battery. I wish the extent of my problems were just the battery draining, but my battery completely died. Think it is hosed?

UPDATE--
Don't know what happened but I am not risking it, I bought to new extra batteries. Hopefully AT LEAST one works

 

turning off the wake up timers worked for me, somewhat!

I changed two things from what I usually do. I usually put the comptuer to sleep.

Yesterday, I turned off the wake up timers and set the computer to hibernate. I shut the computer off at 100% and woke up about 20 hours later at 88%.

 

SOLVED!

I have had the big battery drain problem on my 15th Anniversary Vaio Z too.

BUT I seem to have solved it and, although this post is late to the party I felt it important enough to share with all the Vaio Z drain threads online.

I went to the Vaio Control Centre on my Vaio Z
under Power Management I went to USB Charging Status
and DE-SELECTED "Charge a USB device while your VAIO is off or in hibernation or sleep mode"

I have not experienced the irritating battery drain once in the past 8 days! Not once.

It seems I took very long to find out how to do it but it seems to be the answer to all my woes.
Hope it helps you all guys!

And if it does, do spread the word around.
Do a copy and paste if it's easier.

Hoping that you are all still enjoying what a magnificent sleek beast the Vaio Z is.

Mark (zenman7)