sz-battery drain/standby etc

OK, I went back 4 pages and cant find the person who posted about hibernation and battery drain and how Sony said it was normal, but I'm posting this...

Standby sucks. I dont care what Sony says, but 2.5hours and battery from 100% is down to 88% is bad. Then 3 mins on and its down to 82%. Anybody else still getting battery drain like this? Is there a fix? I thought I read something about turning off the wifi? Still charging so I didnt try that yet.

I've owned 1Toshiba, 2 Sony, and 4 Dell laptops. And only the Sony's would do this. My Dell XPS2 will be at 93% after a day. and Hibernation would last for days.

 

it was me (or our tech support dude) mine is worse than that. it drained the battery overnite. we talked to sony and they said change the power usage of the wifi????

we looked at that and it's not the issue. i owned a sony tr and it didn't do that. the standard answer seems to be "hibernate" which sucks since no matter what people say it takes longer. if you learn anything i'm all ears

 

Wait. maybe its me mixing things up. My standby drained that fast. Hibernate works like normal?

 

no, on most computers (ones that i or my tech guy have used) standby is standby and it goes to "sleep" to use a mac term and it stays that way for a very long time with a little battery drain. it seems on this Vaio (not my TR) you have to put it into hibernate (not the default) to really use no power when it is closed. Hibernate makes some kind of copy to the hard drive then restarts when you hit power. i find it much slower then waking from standby

 

Ok, just to let you know, my s360 on hybernate(where i copies to hd) drained battery pretty fast too. about half as slow but still that would mean by next day, I went from 100% to 88% (I think).
I have to try it on this one tho.

 

OK this just friggen sucks. 81% battery. I but it into hybernate. I wake it up exactly 3 hours later, I'm down to 50%! That's 10% per hour! This is worse than the s360 I just sold. augh. I'm putting it into standby. when I wake up, I'll check to see if the battery is dead.

Can someoen else PLEASE try the hybernate on theirs. Was there a fix? I thought I read something about the wifi not turning off? I didnt see any wifi light on tho.

 

There might be something wrong with your battery or laptop. It shouldn't do that in hibernation.

Standby shuts down most system devices, including the power-hungry hard drive, but the battery continues to supply a small amount of power to the RAM in order to keep the system in a very-low-power "sleep" mode.

Hibernate, on the other hand, copies RAM data to the hard drive and then completely shuts down the system. If you're losing battery power when the system has successfully hibernated (meaning all the LEDs, especially the power one, are completely off)... something is very wrong. It means you're losing power even when the system is off. 1 or 2% over a few days might be acceptable since Li-ion batteries naturally lose stored charge over time, but 10% per hour? No way.

Have you tried just turning off the system (without hibernating) and seeing how much the battery has drained after a few hours?

You might also want to hibernate the system, take out the battery, let it sit outside the notebook for a few hours and then put it back in to check the percentage remaining.

 

on mine if its plugged in and i put it in standby all my lights go out. if i put it in standby with the battery the lan light stays on and i get tons of battery drain. how crazy is that?

 

I just put mine on hibernate, it was plugged when I did and at 100%. After almost two hours I wake up and it was 98% left. Not too bad I believe.

 

I dont get something...Hibernate saves an exact image copy to the hard drive and reloads it when the notebook is started again. I dont understand how it uses battery. To know knowledge only stand-by uses battery as the notebook is still "partially" on.

Btw I only use Hibernate, and never Stand-By.

 

Ok, hows this. I woke up. 7 hours later. And from 49% when I left, its 49% now. I TURNED OF WIFI. WTF? I'm gonna put it into standby and see if the battery drain is gone too with standby. This is wrong. I should not need to be turning OFF my wifi to go into hibernation.

neilk2350- Did you do any updates from Sony's site?

 

ok, standby is still messed up I think. One hour later, my computer woke up from hibernation. I believe this time anyways, it went into standby then into hibernation before the hour. Anyways. it went from 48% to 44%, which is still a big power drop.
I threw it into hibernation again and will check in an hour. I still have wifi off

update: I cant do this. In the 5-8mins I was looking at my settings, my battery went from 44-27%. I have to recharge my battery... Something else is wrong I'll try apply the usb fix and see if it does anything. BUT the usb fix shouldnt do much as it states, it quits working after waking up from a standy or hibernation.

 

it will use battery in startup and shut down. still doesn't explain why mine acts differently when put in standby vs. standby when plugged in. i'm going to hibernate for a couple of hours at 100% and see what happens

 

got me. I'm still waiting for my unit to charge so I can run this test a bit more again. But after doing al lthis hibernation deal, I noticed on the last time I had it on, it was stuck on 1.86Ghz. When I set it to battery power mode, then it went to 1.00Ghz. I had something keepng my processor at 33% so it wouldnt go down to 1.00Ghz when I wasnt doing anything.

 

i see where to check cpu usage (controll alt delete) but not where to see actuall processor speed

 

no change in battery level after 1 hour in hibernate. i'm going to try overnite tonight

 

i've been using hibernate almost every time when i have
my laptop off. i noticed no battery drain, which as others
mentioned in this thread, makes sense, as the system is
*off* when hibernating.

or am i missing something here? some chemical effect
causing these batteries to drain without using them?

 

If you have the system set to power up when the lid is lifted it will drain the battery regardless if it is set to standby or hibernate. Though the power drain in hibernation should be relatively low. The reason for the drain is that circuitry is left powered up to monitor the lid position.

 

nope. and now I left it in hibernation for another hour and wifi on. Guess what? 100% its to 97%. Ack I have no idea why its intermintant now.

 

Here's a laugh. I tried Sony's live chat and here's what I got. I dont think the person actually was reading what I was typing. I'll try what he said.:

chat id : 55560ac3-3452-4ae8-b707-116824f9ae3a
Problem : standby/hibernation has heavy battery drain
Gene_ > Hi Roger. Welcome to Sony Online Support. I'm Gene. Please allow me a moment to review your concern.
Gene_ > Thanks for waiting, I will be happy to assist you with the difficulty you are facing with the Notebook battery.
Gene_ > Could you please share some details on the issue?
roger > not sure. When I place the notebook into either standby or hibernation, battery drain is close to 10% every hour. This should not be the case. In hibernation, it saves to harddrive then shuts down the computer. no more battery drain at that point, but I've seen it go from 100% to 83% in 3 hours in hibernation.
roger > I think out of 4-5 times I tried testing teh hibernation, only once did it work without draining.
roger > standby-which uses the battery to keep a snapshot of ram in memory drains really fast too. I've used Dells which I could place in standby for the whole day and come back to about 90-95% full charge 12 hours later.
roger > Those same Dells I can put into hibernation for a week and come back to like a 97% full battery if I dont use the laptop.
Gene_ > Please stay online while I check this information.
roger > ok.
Gene_ > Thank you for being online.
Gene_ > Roger, I suggest that you charge the battery fully and check the operation.
roger > I have. All my "tests" were done on a 100% charged battery.
Gene_ > If the issue persists, please reset the BIOS and check the operation.
roger > ok. but I didnt change any settings in the BIOS tho.
Gene_ > I can understand your concern. Please check the operation after resetting the BIOS.
roger > ok. what should I do if that doesnt work?
Gene_ > Roger, please reset the BIOS and try to charge the battery fully. Please try to restart the computer using the battery power.
roger > OK. If it doesnt work, should I call back? Or is there something else I can try afterwards since this will take me a few hours to do. As the battery is not at 100% right now.
Gene_ > Please check the performance of the Notebook battery. If the issue persists, please get back to us. We will be glad to help you.
Gene_ > I will forward the link where you will find the required information to reset the BIOS to its default values.
Gene_ > When you receive the link please click on it to open the page and let me know if you are able to view it.
Gene_ > http://www.iq.sony.com/srvs/autoresponsev4.asp?id=94679
roger > yes. ok I will try that
Gene_ > Sure, please go ahead.
Gene_ > You can get back to us through the same medium if you need any further assistance. We will be glad to help you.
roger > ok, I will need to get back to you as I need to charge the battery.
roger > ok
Gene_ > Thank you for contacting Sony Online support. Please feel free to contact us for further assistance.
Gene_ > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

 

ah, ofcourse. i hadn't thought of that setting. i do not use it though

now i know why i don't.

starstreak:

the moment i read that i thought of one of those conversationalist-
bots like a.l.i.c.e. to talk with people.

the bit where he or she keeps repeating the same bit about resetting
the bios is as if he or she is stuck on a certain response and can't con-
tinue without a different trigger from you is funny, but not too helpful..
at least, i doubt a bios reset would fix the problem.

 

that was really scarry. i agree elsewhere where people feel sony tech support is not up to snuff. Macintosh is certainly better. did you try the bios thing did it work? i was updating my ipod so i didn't try hibernation. i do have the lid thing on but i turned that on after i had all the battery problems.

 

well, i have no problem with sony support.


they helped me solve a big problem recently.

as for resetting my bios; i recently updated it,
so the settings have been reset as well.

 

i didnt do the bios up update, but I did do the reset. I'll let you know if anything changed.
Btw, in standbay, how long does the unit stay in it before it does a hibernation? I just noticed just now I put it into standby and now, about 3-5mins later, the unit turned on, and went into hibernnation.

 

i do not know, i always use hibernate, though i noticed
there's a setting for that in control panel -> power op-
tions.

 

neenee try standby. mine goes out of standby within mins. like 3mins maybe. and then goes to hibernation. can you see if yours does that?

 

ok weird. I tried the bios reset. My hibernation seems to be working, although I find it bad that three different times off and on (to check) will bring me to 80% on battery. Only strange thing I see is the 30% cpu usage and that my standby is stanby for under a minute before it goes to hybernation.

 

wtf is bios reset?

 

Go into bios (f2) on startup and goto last tab(page if you want) and select something called (restore defaults) or something like that.
I have no idea if that fixed it, but while standby doesnt seem to work (stay s in standby for under 5mins then goto hibernation) My hibernation works. I'll test it again before I goto bed.

 

That's due to a VAIO Power Management feature. Go into the VPM applet, the VAIO Power Management tab, click Advanced, and uncheck "Automatically hibernate...".

 

thanks, I'll look for that.
Ok, from 98% then hibernation. I woke it up 6 hours later and by the time it came on, it was at 96% and 2mins on, it was down to 92%. I guess its working.
Now that you told me about how to keep the standby on, I'm kinda scared, because I have a feeling that still won't work.

edit: Ok tried that. didn't work. laptop still went into hibernation before 5mins.

 

Well, also make sure that in the Power Schemes tab, the system isn't set to hibernate after a few minutes.

 

Yup its set to 25mins. to goto hibernation. weird.

 

ok now this is weird. I think standby is working. I think the only thing I did was remove the 25mins to goto hibernation. But I dont see why that caused it as it as its set for 25min not like 2 mins.
If this works. looks like besides overall battery life and the light leakage, i'm a happy camper.

 

I'm having exactly the same problem here.

I have tried changing the hibernate setting in power management to various times (20 mins +) but if I put the system (SZ1VP) into standby it wakes up after exactly 5 mins and hibernates. Very annoying in meetings.

I'm going to try Liars suggestion but what concerns me is that I DO want the system to hibernate in a low batery state (under 15% say) so that I do not loose data but I DONT want it to automatically come out of standby after 5 mins and hibernate with 90% battery left.

May have to start a new thread on this.

I also experience battery drain in hibernation which is also very annoying.

 

Nope - same problem. Unchecking the "automaticaly hibernate when computer goes into low power state" tab didn't make a difference.

Still hibernates after 5 mins of being in standby

 

remove under power management, hybernate in XX mins. That worked for me.

 

Question, does this sound right. 7 hours of standby. Unit is warm. When I turn it on, from 100% charged, its at 68%. Thats about 4.6% per hour. This is way better than when I first had the unit, which drained 10% per hour, but does still seem to be a bit high. My Dell would be around 80-85% in about the same time. The Dell had a larger battery, but the unit never got warm...

Yes, I know standby wasnt meant for that long. This was just a test.

 

You know, I went back to some of my old posts, and I noticed that when I had a s460 (that was before I got the s360) the unit had this same issue. Where standby (not hibernation) would keep the unit warm and drain at about 5% per hour.

Is this normal of all Sony laptops? I thought standby was supposed to keep just bearly enough power to keep the ram alive. And these new processors like the Pent M and these new Duo cores are supposed to go into a deep sleep mode to save battery?

 

ok another new thing, the wifi stayed on when I went into standby. I took it out and went back into standby and it went off this time. I'll try standby tonight again and if the unit is warm and drains fast, i'll swap it.

note: Did another sony chat. They said its not supposed to be warm and just do a system restore.

 

You know, sony will win on this.
I don't think I'll return the laptop just for hibernation/standby issues.

It takes me 3-4 hours to reload everything back on, and a couple of days of testing stuff like standby etc. I'm just worn out.

 

I'm in the same boat. Exactly the same issues - but at the end of the day I waited long enough to get this thing and I just can't be assed to throw it back and wait God knows how long to get it sorted before I start the 2 day reinstall, test stabilise process.

As for a system restore - we all know that's a knee jerk support monkey response that will fix nothing.

If there wasn't so much proprietary nonsense involved in a clean install I might be tempted and, although threads here offer a lot of good advice, I really don't have time to get into it.

I'm pretty happy with my sz1vp but I do wish the team at Sony had spent a little more time preparing a £1800 limited edition flagship model for the market - I mean it's not like they could have missed these niggly bugs if they had used a unit for more than a couple of hours.

Sigh.

 

Man now I'm wondering more about this. Been on break for 30mins. I can't get into my game of WOW and I see my battery is at 75% from 100%. CPU is at 1k Ghz so its gotta be normal power drain. I thought it was better than that on my s360 but I forgot now. I guess 2hrs of doing nothing is normal?
*sigh* I'll sleep on it. I'm off the next three days. The junk part is the Compusa where I got the replacement is sold out now due to the sale in Sunday's ad. I have to go to town to get a replacement now.