Thread: Hibernation drawing too much power...

ok but even if you try to hibernate a laptop while plugged in, then after its off if the battery doesnt hold its charge it doesnt matter if hibernate draws any current its still not going to boot up under its own power.

Originally Posted by AllThingsEnd

ok but even if you try to hibernate a laptop while plugged in, then after its off if the battery doesnt hold its charge it doesnt matter if hibernate draws any current its still not going to boot up under its own power.

Yep, the circuitry in the battery itself and on the computer are always drawing current, so there is now avoiding drainage issue. But 12 hours does sound a bit short. How old are these batteries. How hot does your car get. If the computer is ok and the wiring is not faulty, then have a look at the battery, they may not be keeping a charge anymore. Excessive heat and old age kills the ability to keep a charge for extended periods.

Hello everybody!

Thanks for the replies!

Here's to answer a few questions:

The batteries are less than 2 months old so it should not be a problem with that. If I run the laptop off the batteries it's gonna last for about 3,5hours so the battery seems good to me.

The problem started after I changed the hardrive, before that I could leave the computer in hibernation for 1 week without having any problems. The only thing that has changed during the hardrive swap was the OS reinstall (same OS, same USB config, same everything except the physical disk and OS install).

Originally Posted by Friedrice

Hibernate does not draw current, it saves everything in RAM to the Hdd. The only thing i can think of is that it's not really entering hibernate for some reason. My Vaio does this sometimes, you hit the HIbernate button and it goes through the hibernate screen with the running bars and the screen goes off, BUT the thing is still on like it's frozen or went into standby (which draws power).

How could I ensure that the computer actually hibernates?

Originally Posted by Jahntassa

Are you sure the system is actually turning OFF when it goes to hibernate? Watch the physical laptop and make sure all the lights turn off when windows says it hibernates. If it does, you should be fine. It's possible it's hitting standby instead of hibernate.

When laptops truely hibernate, they take as much power as 'off'.

All lights are off after the hibernation has completed so I assume it's completely off. I can still resume from hibernation after I remove and reinstall the battery too.

If I do a "shutdown" on the computer before I leave the car I have no problems rebooting the computer even after 1 week. So it seems like the laptop is not hibernating properly.

Is it somekind of setting in WinXP that can cause this?

Cheers
Borte

I'd check that the powersetting for "running on batteries" or on any other power management software does not have a "standby" time limit that kicks in before your hibernate time period.

It's set to go into standby after 5 minutes and hibernate after 10 minutes, but this should not be a problem when I manually tell it to hibernate.

Cheers
Borte

Any more ideas on this?

Cheers
Borte

Originally Posted by Jahntassa

Are you running the latest BIOS? It should be A16, from the looks of it. Download it here if you dont: http://support.dell.com/support/down...1059&vercnt=13

Don't know if that'll solve it, but from experience i've noticed that many issues with Dells can be solved by a BIOS update.

Its actually A23 (i wrote the wrong type in post #1, it's a Dell c600. So I am running the newest BIOS.

Originally Posted by RawsonDR

Open Device Manager (Control panel, system properties, hardware tab, device manager button). Expand the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" list. Check the properties of each USB Root Hub, under the Power Management tab, to make sure that "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" is checked.

Do the same for your network adapters. Those are the only ones I can think of that list that option.

I'll try this but would this setting affect anything after it has hibernated? I thought this was only for shutting down units while it was running to preserve battery power.

Cheers
Borte