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#41
If I understand what Lenovo support was saying correctly, they were talking about an internal battery that was still installed. There seem to be processes still going on in the laptop even when it's shut down. I even noticed that when it's shut down, I can press the space bar and then a battery symbol appears on the screen for about 3 seconds showing what the battery level is. I think I've even seen this pop up even when I don't press anything. By removing the battery, I should be able to prevent the depletion of the battery in storage. My Dell laptop's battery doesn't run down when not installed, but it's easily removable. I wish they all were.
"I can press the space bar and then a battery symbol appears on the screen for about 3 seconds showing what the battery level is"
That's set or unset in the Bios.
Denis
I see.
Well, since I already went through the trouble of removing the battery, I'll just leave it out for now and then I'll probably reinstall it in a few months to see if it retained it's charge, then change the bios to make it stop draining the battery when shut down, and then wait awhile to see what happens (or doesn't happen). If all goes well at that time, I'll leave the battery installed.
Ok, the experiment is now complete, and has very interesting results.
I was originally going to leave the battery removed for a few months to see if the battery drained at the same rate as when it was installed. Remember, my past experience is that I had left the computer Shut Down (not in Sleep mode) for 4 months and 3 weeks after charging the battery to 75%. When I started it back up after all that time, the battery level was down to ZERO.
So, I decided to remove the internal battery after charging it up to 70% and then wait a few months to reinstall it and see if it had drained at the same rate as when it was installed. I ended up waiting for 5 months and 10 days. The result is that the battery level upon reinstallation and computer startup was at 62%. It had only dropped by a measly 8% in over 5 months!
Conclusion: The laptop is indeed using the battery even after being shut down. I've previously done everything I can to stop that from happening, and it seems that nothing will prevent it, short of physically removing the battery.
For my part, I've started seeing varying results.
Sometimes I shut down the computer completely for a few days and then find that it has been losing 2% of battery charge a day.
Sometimes I shut down the computer completely for a few days and then find that it has been losing no battery charge at all.
Denis
I've had 10-year-old Notebooks keep their charge after 3 months of full shutdown by holding the power key in for 10 seconds rather than the usual shutdown process. Years ago the power supply in a computer connected directly to the power switch when using the AT-style but the ATX-style boards have the power switch connected to it and the board connected to the power supply, always has power to it when connected to a power source. The power switch wakes up the motherboard to get things started.