Vaio CW Battery Drain Information

Sounds like you experienced what others are calling "battery drain". What we are learning on this thread (I think) is that many used to call the 28% you experienced a drained battery - but we are finding you can still get quite a bit of time out of it regardless what the Battery Meter says. Thus, what was thought to be a drained battery is only the Sony Battery Meter and its erroneous reporting.

HOWEVER - there is still some contention that if you let the laptop sit for longer periods (especially sleep) - we are ALSO getting physical drain from the battery AS WELL AS the commensurate Battery Meter faultiness we are all aware of.

I did some more experimenting today - I played with the scenario of popping the battery out for a minute after shutdown. It did something as when I started up two hours later it was at 47% when I shut down at 53%. (the best difference I have had so far between the two). And it has been at 47% since I started typing this (and still is). So there is something to the battery "pop out" method as mentioned earlier.

I also installed the latest Power Management software from Sony.com. Not sure of its impact yet, but have the latest nonetheless.

In summary, I am 100% sure there is a faulty Battery Meter, and it reports incorrectly in different scenarios - especially when you sleep / hibernate / shutdown and come back in. If you turn the laptop on at 100% and work until its dead at 0% (without shutting down, sleeping, hibernation), the Battery Meter seems to work correctly and track the drain successfully down to 0%

BUT, the jury is still out as to whether there is any physical battery drain IN ADDITION to the known battery meter reporting problem. If the Battery Meter worked flawlessly, then of course we would know for sure if there was any physical batter drain or not. But it does not... maybe this is by design?? ;-) (being cynical, but think about it - if the batteries really were getting physically drained, the first thing I would do is screw up the Meter so you could not verify)

Anyone, please add to, confirm, or refute anything stated...

I will say one thing - other than this battery thing, this is a pretty darned good laptop.,..

 

The problem is the BPS13 or BPL batteries and its sensors. Cause this battery model is in CS, CW and FW series...all model with problem with "drain"

 

Hey after installing the Vaio Power Management Update the effects of this "battery drain" or better described as misread battery levels seem to be minimized. I just tested it out last night. Putting the computer to sleep at about 89% when turning it on this morning it is now sitting at 83% which is a marked improvement over previous tests. Before when I woke it up in the morning it would come up with like 25% and sit there for an extended period of time. I will run a few more tests post the results here.

There are two possibilities.
1) Sony is actually working to fix the problem and have in fact released an update that helps.
2) the problem is sporadic in nature and is difficult to wrap our arms around with any scientific results

 

is the link available on the sony cw driver site? i see one dated 3/9 on the driver site.

 

Since i have my CW2S1E, i've been working with a clean install. I've never installed any Sony crapware. Just basic drivers and Vaio Smart Network (to be able to turn off bluetooth).
I was aware of this issues, so i didn't care my laptop wasted "some" battery while powered off (10 to 15% in 8 hours). But as you guys said, when powered on, it really stays with same percentage for about 30 to 45 minutes.
This last evening i did my first experiment. Powered off Windows (shut down) on AC power (battery was on laptop at 100%). After shut down removed AC adapter from laptop and went to sleep. Just for your information, bluetooth was off in windows, but WLAN was on before shutdown, and i let the switch on, also.
This morning i removed the battery, then connected the AC adapter and powered it on. After booting, i put battery again and opened CPUID Hardware Monitor. It showed 50610mWh. Also windows said battery was at 100%.
So there was no battery draining. Really nothing.
Tonight i'm trying this again, but instead of booting windows, i'll boot linux and read battery levels. I'll remove battery again before i turn my laptop on.

 

OK, something has been working for me. Yesterday, I charged up to 100% and worked for a few minutes and shut the box down. 24 hrs later, I started up at 94% and has stayed there for 15 min now.

This is the second time in a row this has happened. I have done two things that may have an impact:
- First, I installed the latest Power Mgt software from Sony.
- Second, both times I popped the battery out for 30 seconds after shutting down.

I am not sure which is causing the improved behavior of the battery and reporting, but I will isolate it over the next couple of days. Next time I shut down, I won't pop the battery out and see what happens.

 

i had battery at 53%, then shut down, did nothing. turned on compt 10 mins later. 25% battery =))
everything is up to date (including power management)
the funny thing is that it went down to 8% (24 mins left) after 1 hour and a half.
But if plug in right after you see 25%, it will charge the battery. So this is what? stupid software?

 

yes it happens on my cw too, stupidolive. it states 83 percent and continue charging tho im quite sure my battery was 100 and its just software calculating problem.

 

OK I tested mine out again last night and shut down the laptop at 90% started it up this morning and it is sitting at 88%.

I didn't do anything like pulling the battery or anything like that. just shut it down and turned it on. I did add an HG Duo high speed memory stick for use as a dedicated readyboost drive but I don't see how that would make a difference.

 

can someone link to the updated sony power management software?

 

Exactly ... I have CS Series for about a year now & face the same issues as being faced by CW owners. Have enabled the Battery Care Function @ 80%.

Had clean installed my system with W7 Pro; after installing Battery Checker have been getting error message;

At the same time feel that the battery is draining a bit more quickly.
Can we do anything about it? And also how do we uninstall this Battery Checker?

 

I also installed the power update and have similar results, went from 95% to 89% overnight.
So this may be a solution.

 

I got mine here http://www.sony.co.in/support/download/product/vpccw26fg/modelfirst, dated 18-03-2010.

 

yeah sorry couldn't post a link since I got mine from the sony update application.

 

installed it. still experiencing inaccurate battery meter / battery drain issues. oh well, this is just a "quirk" we're going to have to live with for now.

 

Owners of the Z and SR series have has lengthy discussions about this issue in the past. No one ever came up with a difinitive solution and Sony has never acknowledged it to be a problem. Those other threads are pretty much inactive now because they recognize that Sony is never going to fess up to this issue. My guess is that we can forget about any sort of "magic update" that will fix the issue. I sure took the luster off of my new laptop experience back in August. For that reason, I will probobably not buy another Sony again.

 

Sony's knowledge base regarding battery drain: http://www.kb.sony.com/selfservice/...ES_1_1&dialogID=98032008&stateId=1 0 98030148

 

Yup! Seen it before. Kind of confirms what I said - that Sony says this is normal. It may be normal for VAIO laptops but I know other brands do not have this issue.

 

My FZ doesn't have this issue, although the standard battery itself is very poor in holding charge.

 

I am OK with the amount of battery time I get out of my SR when it starts off at 80% which is my battery care setting. My problem is the unpredictability of the battery meter. Example; Sometimes it will boot from an off state and be at the full 80% after having been unplugged for 8 hours. Other times it will boot and start out at 65% after having been unplugged for 45 minutes or so.

 

All people here have drain, it´s a fact, if cause is the battery sensor or problem with W7 or bluetooth that not turn off,... We can´t fix without Sony and seems Sony will not solve this problem! (after Z...SR....FW....CS...CW series have this problem...and until today not solved) And they think is totally normal this situation! Pals We Have a Notebook thats not portable! (like a desknote) -_- Bull...


If anyone have a way to burn out this battery care sensor in battery, I appreciate


I ll buy a generic battery and see if this issue is solved...
Or install another SO like XP....Ubuntu.... or other SO ...a land without battery care...
If all this don´t solve...really...I will not buy another Vaio in my life.

The last way to solve this problem is sell this notebook and buy a REAL notebook...

 

i still get a fair amount of battery time. the battery meter is just really annoying and I do feel like i'm getting as much life from the battery as i should. Although i'm satisfied w/ the machine otherwise, this will be my last Sony laptop, ever.

For them to overlook something as critical as the f*cking battery on a laptop is something i'd expect from a 3rd or 4th tier manufacturer.

 

after reading this sounds like indication proplom.if your getting 3.5 hours per the specs theres no drain issue/ it sounds like since when you boot up with out the battery then install the battery after boot and the indication is normal. sounds like theres info lost on power down hybernation are sleep mode. from the battery to windows.

 

Hi

I have the same problem with my new Sony Vaio e-series laptop.

On Hibernation over night i lost 45% battery, but on shut down I only lost 15% battery.

It's still a very annoying problem, has anyone come up with a fix yet?

All Windows 7 and Vaio updates have been installed and had no effect.

Thanks

 

omg finally someone else with the same battery problems as me! I just bought my sony vaio F series less than a week ago, and the battery drains when I shut down. Like it would be at 100% when I shut it down, and then when I turn it back on it goes to 80%, I call up customer service and they say its "normal" and I think its a bunch of BS

 

joshjlee, you should check iwth 80%, how long can your laptop run till say 5%. I have my battery like yours but then it still runs for more than 3 hours (80% indicator stays the same for an hour!)

 

the major problem is hibernate. My new vaio is losing 40%-50% overnight on hibernate?

Anyone got this problem? is there a fix?

Any help is much appreciated..

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of VAIO ownership. I would say that everyone in this thread has the same problem. There is also a "Z Battery Drain Thread" and "SR battery drain thread". I think there are others too but the bottom line is, there won't be a fix and Sony does not acknowledge this to be a problem. They say it is "normal". Were it not for this issue, I would really love my SR. As it stands now, I will never buy another Sony laptop. All that said, your 40%-50% does seem a little excessive, but everyone has the drain to some degree or or another.

 

I had battery care off. But still i have seen battery draining. I have enabled battery care function now.

 

I would ad the FW series to the battery drain problem when in hibernate. 20-30% loss overnight.

 

I say, and repeat.

All vaio with BPS (CS, SR, Z, CW, FW) battery model or maybe BPL too have this problem.

Se if anyone have a different battery model (a chinese/ HK generic one) we can discover the real problem but I guess we are with a no fixable problem.

 

Has Sony Fixed the problem?

Yeserday there were 5 Sony Updates, 1 was for the Bluetooth drivers...

- Hibernated on 100% last night, pulled plug out.
- Turned it on this morning and was suprised to see 100% as my battery level.

Am at work now, but will do more tests, but this has not happened before...

(This is for my new sony e-series laptop)

 

So as of right now what solutions do we have if any?

And to get this right...All the Vaio series' have this drainage issue?

 

Hi,

I have a VAIO VPCCW290x/l, this is a custom configured laptop at sony style. I have i5 processor. I have been noticing that the laptop battery drains off when i shutdown the system and unplug the power cord.

I called sony twice and the rep logged in remotely and downloaded the power management s/w from their support site. The problem is still there. I dont understand why they keep draining even when i shut down windows.

I asked the sonly support rep and he says these are lithium batteries and will drain when not in use like cell phones. I told him that dell batteries do not drain when you shut them down, and also even cell phones wont drain like from 92 % to 76 % when you shut down your laptop for like 1 hr or so.

we changed the battery management software to do a custom 100% instead of sony's default charging upto 80 % of battery to preserve life.

There is something seriously wrong that sony is not acknowledging and i think the fix is not that easy.

please let me know if you guys have any success in resolving this.

Thanks
Kartik

 

Kartik, download the latest vaio updates. I did so for my sony e-series and so far after 12 hours on hibernate, the battery stays at 100%. Before hand it was losing 50%...

 

there is no bluetooth update for vaio CW series, i am 100% sure that the problem is with sony bluetooth drivers as i am getting 0% battery drain after uninstalling bluetooth drivers, earlier i was getting around 20% battery drain.

 

RS4 & Karthik...

I created a thread on the microsoft forum, it seems someone else has found a fix by disabling the wake timers...

Please see here...

Battery Drain on Hibernate 45% in 12 hours - Sony Vaio

 

The wake timers should have been disabled by default in Windows 7.

 

They wasn't on my new vaio e-series.

 

Don't forget that wake timers are used to move from sleep to hibernate. Also, scheduled tasks will not run from sleep anymore.

If you don't use sleep then disabling wake timers is harmless.

 

You'd think. But on my CW, the OEM default is 20 minutes. If the notebook is asleep for 20 minutes it wakes itself up and is supposed to go into hibernation, but mine had big-time issues with getting into hibernation by itself, as once it was on it was on, usually until the battery state put the machine into hibernation. And every time one opens VAIO care and even glances at the power settings, it resets whatever settings you have set in the Windows Power Management box from the Control Panel. I'm constantly checking my power settings so I know that if I close my notebook, I can wake it up with a charge.

 

I was talking about the setting in a clean Windows 7 install. Uninstall any Sony software that does the reset.

 

I have to have Vaio Control Center for fan management. Otherwise I would.

 

Windows 7 has fan management too. But you need to do a clean install to have the setting unlocked in advanced power options. Vaio Power Management hides that setting.

 

Actually, I've tried that setting... between passive and active cooling, and it doesn't really work. I can't passively cool my CW...lol It'd melt. But the Vaio control center has a setting that changes from "Balanced" to "Performance". Performance will ramp the fans up, even under no stress, to bring temps down even lower, and balanced will keep the notebook quiet while still keeping it cool. Balanced lets my CW get too hot for my tastes, with where I use it during the day, so this option is a requirement for me.

 

I've posted in the CW i3/i7 owner's thread, extolling the CW's battery life on half a charge (Core 2 Duo model though). I thought the battery drain issue was only a minor concern. But I'm afraid to report I'm experiencing serious battery drain as well.

I don't get battery drain when I turn it off completely or put it into standby.

I do get serious battery drain when I resume operation on battery, despite being charged to 50% (I've enabled the super battery care function). When I turn it on, the battery life indicated will be way less than 50%.

What on earth?!

 

I have a question regarding the battery care function. I seems to be missing from my options. I have my computer battery charging to 50% and would like to charge it to full, because I want to use it in the car. This may be a stupid question, but I really can not find an option for the energy saver anywhere anymore. I've used it a few times over the past few months with no problems. Does anyone know where I can find it or what happened to it??

 

Hmm if i just type in "Vaio Conttrol Center" in the search bar it opens up and then under power management I see the battery care options.

 

SORY FOR MY BAD ENGLISH.
IF YOU START THE COMPUTER IN BATTERY MODE (WITHOUT AC) WITH VERY LOW LIGTHNESS THE PROBLEM IS SOLVE WITH THE WRONG Battery INDICATION.

 

bump. any conclusion to this?