XP sp2 power drain - fixed available at microsoft

Hi guys and gals,

I just ran across this article today. Microsoft have acknowledge the problem and produce and update for it. Check it out here:

http://www.everythingusb.com/intel_core_duo.html

the the update here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=918005

haven't try it yet but I'm going to try it now.

 

Thanks! I just applied it to a non duo based notebook. Unfortunately microsoft says it doesn't fix everything.

 

Hot damn. I just installed it.

 

Just installed it on my SZ...no real way to test it though

Thanks and you have rep

 

Just installed it on my FE

I have been waiting a long time for this! Thanks man!

 

i installed it earlier.

Thanks

 

After reading the kb article, it looks like there are a couple of other things they may be working on that may also improve battery life. That is nice to know.

 

I you read the article, I think that this just might fix all of our sleep power drain problems we've had with the SZ.

 

is this the reg edit that we applied (do we need to remove it if we did?) does that really mean standby really works now?

 

hey starstreak since you and i were the ones whining most about power issues and my SZ is at sony i would love to know if this is a fix. skip surfing today and let me know

 

Whats strange is that this "problem" was never brought up/discovered until Dual Core CPU's started showing up, so all indications we that this was a USB and Dual Core issue... something neither link above mentions

 

how do you want me to test it?

 

what i would do and i'm a novice is do a system resore point.. apply the fix and see if it goes to standbye and hibernate properly (i know you have benchmarks from before).

 

k this is what i'll do. I'll install it do a defrag (nothing to do with test, but I was going to do that before I saw this thread) then i'm gonna shutdown, unplug the power chord, boot up into speed mode and go into STANBY till I wake up. should be a good 5 hrs. If this doesnt work, My battery should be into low 80s% if it does, I should still be in the 90s% hopefully upper 90%

 

i wait with baited breath

 

ok. wow. defrag was quick. Ok lucky I was charging my laptop (still drains too fast for me, but thats just me) before I found this post so I was at 100% already. Ok, before I forget. I was at 100%, rebooted without power chord plugged in. I got into windows and waited for things to settle. about 4-5mins total. I put it into standby (damn I hope I didn't have it so it would go into hibernation after XX amount of mins or i'll have to do this over again tomorrow) at 95-96% battery (oh, thats better than the sz120 I previously had. it would yeasly been 92%) and 2:40mins remaining. But take that part with a grain of salt as it jumps around alot.

awww frick it went into hibernaition just now. gonna take me like 20mins to get the battery charged again. Yawn.
tell you what. I'll go ahead and just recheck my settings and reboot and just put it into standby from whereever the battery is at.
Just finished checking my settings. I have no friggen idea why it went into hibernation. My power settings said not to use hibernation and in sonys power settings I had removed the checkmark to going to hibernation when cpu goes into low power state

 

ok 94% and back into standby... btw, I was re-reading that check-mark in the sony settings. It said when computer goes into a low power state, it will allow the computer to goto hibernation. It didnt say low battery state. Does that mean if the cpu goes into one of those low power C0 battery state, there might be corruption of my data because of how little power is used?
I'll check my laptop in 5mins to see if it goes into hibernation.
If it does I'll let you know what % it is either way. If Sony works like any other laptops waking up from hibernation should yield 95-93% if it doesnt go into hibernation it should yield above 90% if it says in standby. Don't you agree?
If it fails like my sz110, hibernation drained down to 85% from 100% and standby was like 76% I think...

 

well its roughly 4.5 hours later. My battery is at 75%. dont think it worked out well. Thats 5% per 1.125hours. I checked my old posts about battery drain and 5% in 1 hour is about what I got. I forgot to check if the unit was warm. Back when I had the sz120, the unit drained 5% per hour and the unit was warm.

 

Would someone be kind enough to send me the update as it is using their new update system that won't take non-activated OS's? I still have 24 days before i activate my windows install and i don't like to activate until at the very end just in case i need to wipe it clean again (i figure if all is well for 60 days, then it'll be good from there on out)

PM me if you can and i'll give you my yahoo address.. thanks

 

You can still register it. Wiping it clean will cause you to register it again, but it will know its on the same laptop so you'll be fine.

 

Um so did anybody else notice any improvements? I didn't. at least not that I can see so far.

 

Why does it matter if you have activated or not in the event that you have to wipe it clean? If you wipe it clean, you have to activate again regardless, right? I have done re-installs many times with the same copy of XP, as well as using the restore app on my SZ, and activated every time with no problems. Is there something I'm missing, or some other reason I should not activate right away after installing windows?

 

Wow, sorry to strike such a nerve for a simple request...

My apologies for having the habit of waiting until the last day to activate Windows so i do not "use up" one of the activations.....

Sorry i asked

 

WindowsXP-KB918005

 

i always thought once you bought and paid for it you could activate it a bazillion times if you wanted to...when i first started learning about computers years ago and would experiment with the OS and overclock and stuff i would do like what seemed like 2 or so clean installs a day for like a month straight. and if i got a new computer i would install it on that becuase i got rid of my old one, sometimes i ran into activation problems but a call to microsoft fixed that, all i would tell them is that i got a new computer and was installing windows on it and the other pc no longer exists.

 

That's a very smart move.

Regardless, you wouldn't "use up" one of your activations. Why? Because the hardware doesn't change. So, if you reactivate Windows later on the same PC, it's going to generate the same hash.

There is no such thing as limited number of activations, AFAIK. The only numeric limit is that you cannot reactivate more than once every 120 days (except the case you had no significant changes in your hardware). Which is a pretty fair deal, considering that you don't have to activate in the first 30 days after a fresh install.

On a side note, the whole point of the activation for OEM versions is the creation of a link between the serial and the motherboard. Once a serial number is activated, you cannot reactivate it on a different model of motherboard, even if everything else remains unchanged. That's not a problem with notebooks, but can be a pain the neck for desktop PC MoBo upgraders.

 

I wasn't slamming, just asking the question. I just don't see what you are gaining by not activating.

 

After installing this patch, my lappy(160) shows 5 hours of battery life.

 

and in the real world?

 

well the old patch would say such stuff too. well mine only hit 3:25mins but the trick is, does it still show you that after hibernation and standby? The old patch quit working once it got out of those two modes.

 

i'm using my powerbook g4 aluminum while the SZ is up on blocks and i gotta say the SZ has it beat hands down for actual use time. love the backlit keys and the battery that you can check on the powerbook though...

 

Yup, but then agaion that PB is like a few years old. The SZ had better beat it. I wonder if apple somehow copyrighted the backlite keys, I swear thats so useful compaired to some of the dumb things I've seen added to notebooks. Ie: my xps2 that has "glowing" xps logos on it. Yuck.

 

Ilovethemacsbacklitkeys!

 

this is so utterly offthread we all deserve to be flamed. but i was wondering why you went 120 instead of macbook pro. i did it because of weight batterylife and both expresscard and pcmia. but sitting here using os x and my keys are backlit i'm sort of regretting it. i know starstreak tried the macbook and it was a mess. but some day maybe a mac ultralight...

 

only thing that kept me off a mac, was the package size and the dedicated video. no regrets so far (stupid space bar)