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May 14, 2008
Fixed the 'Power Drain During Hibernate' Bug on my Fujitsu LifeBook
Recently, I got a Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 ultraportable. It's a black, shiny beauty with ports and features a-plenty. And at just 2.9 lbs, it certainly won't break my back.
But (and there always seems to be a "but") the notebook had this annoying tendency to drain power even while hibernated. I'd hibernate it on, say, Friday afternoon with the battery at 100% and, when I turned it on again Monday morning, the battery would be at 40%. That's certainly not the way hibernate in Windows XP is supposed to work (for the unfamiliar, hibernate writes the contents of RAM to the hard drive and then shuts down everything; it takes longer to resume than Standby mode, but it doesn't draw on the battery...or at least it's not supposed to).
After Googling for an answer, I came up with nothing. Calling Fujitsu lead to some less-than-satisfactory results:
Call 1: Tier 1 support tells me this is normal. I argue differently; none of the other three Windows XP laptops I have do this. She refers me to Tier 2.
Call 2: Tier 2 says it's not normal and, because the unit is obviously drawing power when not in use (and, therefore, producing heat), they'd rather have me send it in than risk self-combusting in my bag (I added the self-combusting part). Five days later, and after spending $33.75 in postage out of my own pocket, the LifeBook returns with a new motherboard. Same problem.
I start seriously searching around for an explanation. I discover that some Lenovo Thinkpads don't react well to Wake-on-LAN (where the laptop can be resumed from sleep/hibernate when it receives a special packet via its Ethernet port). I check my Windows Control Panel settings; the computer's Ethernet controller is set to permit Wake-on-LAN. I disable it. I then delve into the BIOS and disable Wake-on-LAN there, too.
So far, no battery drain when hibernated.
How could something this simple escape the resources of a giant, experienced computer maker like Fujitsu?
I want my $33.75 back.
Comments
haha, I like your comment about "I want my $33.75 back"
Actually I was thinking to buy Fujitsu P8010 laptop, but I have a little concern about their SL7100 chips. I am still thinking about buying P8010 or S-series.
Keep up the good work!
=^o^=
Posted by: Tetra at May 16, 2008 1:45 AM
Tetra: If the processor is your only concern, I'd say get it now. The SL7100 is a pretty new architecture, but it runs very well and I got over 5 hours of battery life on the P8010 last night while using WiFi, so it seems to step its power consumption quite effectively. I really haven't tossed anything at it that it seemed to bog down on, but then I haven't asked it to do things like video transcoding or other proc-intensive activities.
Posted by: Craig at May 16, 2008 10:08 AM
Thanks for the info... I'm not as advanced as y'all... where do I find the Wake On LAN settings in the control panel?
Posted by: Keith at June 24, 2008 10:25 PM
Keith, try this:
Start: Control Panel: System: Hardware: Device Manager: Network Adapters: [Select it]: Power Management
That's from memory, but I think it's correct.
Posted by: Craig at June 24, 2008 10:53 PM