My laptop battery drains when completely shutdown

Try3 · 18 May 2021

Messerschmitt & W10 tweaker,

I have seen in several threads about your unusual battery drain the suggestion of reinstalling the battery driver. I have never had to do this myself.
- I do urge you first to disconnect the battery from the computer to get a final confirmation that the drain is only whilst connected.
- Then use the procedure suggested by nopivnick & Razor Support in delete battery drivers - MSAForum [it's the second post in the set and is dated 15th July 2017].

You will notice that nopivnick had other problems, such as varying reports of Design capacity, but nothing else posted detracted from that battery driver replacement procedure.

I think I have seen similar recommendations in TenForums but I didn't keep any links to those threads.

Best of luck,
Denis

Megahertz · 18 May 2021

You didn't answer:

- If you using the computer and take out the charger, does the battery holds normally?

- When battery is fully charger-ed, shutdown and remove the battery. Install it some days latter and start without the charger. Did the battery lost the charge?
If it discharges out of the computer, or if it discharge very fast on battery mode it is time to replace the battery.

RolandJS · 18 May 2021

"Sorry for the late reply. My GF has had a very bad reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine and the past month has been very busy with hospital visits." We here hope all will go very well soon!! Keep us posted if you want.
Megahertz is correct -- If indeed it is "time to replace the battery" -- NinjaBatt is one of several very good battery purchase places.

W10 Tweaker · 18 May 2021

Try3 said:

Messerschmitt & W10 tweaker,

I have seen in several threads about your unusual battery drain the suggestion of reinstalling the battery driver. I have never had to do this myself.
- I do urge you first to disconnect the battery from the computer to get a final confirmation that the drain is only whilst connected.
- Then use the procedure suggested by nopivnick & Razor Support in delete battery drivers - MSAForum [it's the second post in the set and is dated 15th July 2017].

You will notice that nopivnick had other problems, such as varying reports of Design capacity, but nothing else posted detracted from that battery driver replacement procedure.

I think I have seen similar recommendations in TenForums but I didn't keep any links to those threads.

Best of luck,
Denis

Thanks Denis, that thread was an interesting read and I had been pondering the corrupted driver idea already.

I find it most interesting that SOC behavior appears to vary considerably between a normal GUI initiated shutdown and a Command line shutdown. It makes me wonder if the GUI initiated shutdown is a true shutdown or not.

The fact that the SOC doesn't change much with the Command line shutdown is encouraging and that my battery may not be pooched. I'll try a few more tests and report.

Then again, if the battery driver has become corrupted, all these apparent behaviors could be suspect and/or erroneous.

Megahertz said:

You didn't answer:

- If you using the computer and take out the charger, does the battery holds normally?

- When battery is fully charger-ed, shutdown and remove the battery. Install it some days latter and start without the charger. Did the battery lose the charge?
If it discharges out of the computer, or if it discharge very fast on battery mode it is time to replace the battery.

I believe this is directed at the OP and can't comment other than to say, I believe his/her MSI laptop is the same as mine as far as having an internal battery. Yes, the best test is charge, remove & shelf it and test 24, 36 or 72 hours later to see if the battery holds charge.

I know I have many tests I can use before I pop this laptop open to disconnect the battery.

RolandJS said:

"Sorry for the late reply. My GF has had a very bad reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine and the past month has been very busy with hospital visits." We here hope all will go very well soon!! Keep us posted if you want.

Thanks Roland, I'm hoping the AZ grief is somewhat finished other than my GF having to be on blood thinners for the immediate foreseeable future. Hopefully, the migraines will subside in time.

The OP's battery may well be toasted and possibly also my battery. Given that there's a huge difference of change in the SOC between the Windows GUI initiated shutdown and a Command line shutdown, I'm looking for another solution besides replacement.

RolandJS said:

Megahertz is correct -- If indeed it is "time to replace the battery" -- NinjaBatt is one of several very good battery purchase places.

I thought if the OP tries the test I suggested, it may very well confirm the battery is requiring replacement or that the battery issue is similar to my laptop's problem.

Try3 · 18 May 2021

W10 Tweaker said:

I find it most interesting that SOC behavior appears to vary considerably between a normal GUI initiated shutdown and a Command line shutdown. It makes me wonder if the GUI initiated shutdown is a true shutdown or not.
The fact that the SOC doesn't change much with the Command line shutdown is encouraging and that my battery may not be pooched. I'll try a few more tests and report.

If you want some comparative results then I'll be happy to repeat whatever shutdown procedures you are using as long as you explain "SOC" and what those two shutdown procedures are. I do not believe I have any battery-related problems.

My routine monitoring of shutdowns is through Event viewer Custom views.EventViewer.zip

- You could use the Import control on the right-hand side of Event viewer then name them as you wish
- I use the names Power - Starts, shutdowns and Power - Starts

I could, if you wanted, post differences I find in those Event records for the two different shutdown procedures you're talking about.

All the best,
Denis

W10 Tweaker · 18 May 2021

Try3 said:

If you want some comparative results then I'll be happy to repeat whatever shutdown procedures you are using as long as you explain "SOC" and what those two shutdown procedures are. I do not believe I have any battery-related problems.

My routine monitoring of shutdowns is through Event viewer Custom views.EventViewer.zip

- You could use the Import control on the right-hand side of Event viewer then name them as you wish
- I use the names Power - Starts, shutdowns and Power - Starts

I could, if you wanted, post differences I find in those Event records for the two different shutdown procedures you're talking about.

All the best,
Denis

Thanks Denis, I appreciate the offer.

I have a couple of things I'd like to try, however; more information is always better.

Unfortunately, most of these tests involve a long sit for the battery, in order to gauge how long they can maintain state of charge (SOC) or how fast it decays over time.

If you could at your next convenience, utilize whatever you usually use to measure SOC, I use an app called BatteryBar, record date/time and method of shutdown along with SOC. Whenever you start the next day, record all the same data to determine how much the SOC has decayed over time.

My laptop battery drains when completely shutdown-0518-batterybar-soc.jpg

For the first shutdown test, I just used Win X, 'u' for Shut down or sign out, and 'u' again for Shut down.

The next time you're ready to shutdown for a similar period of time, record all the same particulars and then use;
Admin CMD Prompt, 'shutdown /s /t 000'. I was using 'shutdown /l /s' but now the shutdown process is no longer consistent.

After the next start, hopefully close to the time period used in the previous test but not critical, record all the same info to see if the rate of decay on the SOC is any different. If the system is working properly, I wouldn't expect to see much difference.

I do realize that using Batterybar for SOC may not be precise, however; I believe it's more than accurate enough when my test results are showing a difference in excess of 38% between the two methods of shutdown.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

unifex · 18 May 2021

@W10 Tweaker: I think you're on to something. I just performed the following test on my desktop machine. Of course, there is no battery, but we can test whether the machine drains power while shut down. Indeed, two ways of shutting it down produce different results.

Method 1 - regular GUI shutdown (start button - power - shutdown).

Method 2 - command line shutdown (I used simply "shutdown /s").

Obviously, both methods shut down the machine. However, after the first method, the keyboard lits up if any key is pressed (again, this is while the machine is shut down!), but after the second it does not. This tells me that the motherboard does draw some energy while being supposedly shutdown.

Now, the start up takes significantly longer if the machine is shutdown using the Method 2 (command line). Which makes me think, this whole issue must have to do with some sort of fast startup setting in BIOS, that by whatever reason is not triggered by the command line shutdown. I'll try to disable this setting tomorrow and try again to see if that makes any difference.

Megahertz · 18 May 2021

unifex said:

@W10 Tweaker: I think you're on to something. I just performed the following test on my desktop machine. Of course, there is no battery, but we can test whether the machine drains power while shut down. Indeed, two ways of shutting it down produce different results.

Method 1 - regular GUI shutdown (start button - power - shutdown).

Method 2 - command line shutdown (I used simply "shutdown /s").

Obviously, both methods shut down the machine. However, after the first method, the keyboard lits up if any key is pressed (again, this is while the machine is shut down!), but after the second it does not. This tells me that the motherboard does draw some energy while being supposedly shutdown.

Now, the start up takes significantly longer if the machine is shutdown using the Method 2 (command line). Which makes me think, this whole issue must have to do with some sort of fast startup setting in BIOS, that by whatever reason is not triggered by the command line shutdown. I'll try to disable this setting tomorrow and try again to see if that makes any difference.

I had a discussion with Denis (Try3) on another thread about the first shut down that in fact isn't a shutdown. He demonstrated that in fact, in Win 10, a shutdown is in fact a hybrid sleep + hibernation. That explain why it boots faster

The CMD shutdown /p (no delay) is in fact a real shutdown and that is why it takes longer to boot.

PimpleMaze · 18 May 2021

couldn't it be possible there are some bios settings activated that draw power, even if the machine is shut down? like wake-on-lan, or usb power settings?

Try3 · 18 May 2021

Megahertz said:

I had a discussion with Denis (Try3) on another thread about the first shut down that in fact isn't a shutdown.

No, that was somebody else. I am rather distracted with a fault at the moment but I don't recall ever commenting on hybrid sleep in relation to a shutdown.
I believe that hybrid sleep is a combination of S3 Sleep & Hibernation.

Sorry I couldn't help,
Denis