Battery continues to drain heavily after my IBM X 61s has hibernated

[Ian Ngai]

My new X 61s came preinstalled with Vista Business. I discovered that the
battery power was drained 20% over 8 - 10 hours of hibernation. IBM/Lenovo
has replaced the battery, motherboard and hard drive but to no avail.

After more than a week of investigation, IBM/Lenovo has discovered that 1 or
more Vista critical update is causing the excessive power drain. The
temporary solution is to unplug the power adapter before the machine is put
into hibernation mode.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

My new X 61s came preinstalled with Vista Business. I discovered that the
battery power was drained 20% over 8 - 10 hours of hibernation. IBM/Lenovo
has replaced the battery, motherboard and hard drive but to no avail.

After more than a week of investigation, IBM/Lenovo has discovered that 1
or more Vista critical update is causing the excessive power drain. The
temporary solution is to unplug the power adapter before the machine is
put into hibernation mode.

That's strange, as hibernation mode effectively turns the laptop off, after
saving the memory contents to disk.

Maybe this behaviour will stop if you uninstall the ThinkPad ACPI driver and
the Battery Maximizer driver if you have them installed, or vice versa.

I am not sure if those drivers are still in the X61 though. I have an older
version of the X-series laptops, the X31. Fantastic laptops - I will not
use anything else. It's about time I replaced it, but it works perfectly
with XP. I might get a X70 when it comes out - hopefully the build quality
will be as good as the X31's.

ss.

 

[Ian Ngai]

You are correct, Hibernation mode shouldn't use any power at all. Lenovo/IBM
has confirmed the same to me.
The battery drain did not happen after Lenovo/IBM had reinstalled Vista.
However, after Lenovo/IBM downloaded and installed around 19 Microsoft Vista
critical updates, the problem reappeared.

A friend had installed both XP Pro and Vista on the same X 60. The battery
drain only affect Vista but not XP! So, I am very sure that the battery
drain only affects machines with Vista+Updates.

Lenovo/IBM is running two X 61s 24/7 to ascertain which one or two Microsoft
critical updates are causing the battery drain. Results should be available
today or tommorrow, stay tune.....

 

[dennis@home]

You are correct, Hibernation mode shouldn't use any power at all.
Lenovo/IBM has confirmed the same to me.
The battery drain did not happen after Lenovo/IBM had reinstalled Vista.
However, after Lenovo/IBM downloaded and installed around 19 Microsoft
Vista critical updates, the problem reappeared.

A friend had installed both XP Pro and Vista on the same X 60. The battery
drain only affect Vista but not XP! So, I am very sure that the battery
drain only affects machines with Vista+Updates.

Lenovo/IBM is running two X 61s 24/7 to ascertain which one or two
Microsoft critical updates are causing the battery drain. Results should
be available today or tommorrow, stay tune.....

Have you checked to see if you have hybrid sleep enabled rather than
hibernation?
It looks the same apart from the system stays suspended while there is
battery power to enable "instant on".
It still keeps the state on the disk like hibernation so if the battery goes
flat nothing is lost.
It would give the symptoms you describe and unless you looked for the
"instant on" you wouldn't notice.

 

[Ian Ngai]

The latest Lenovo/IBM diagnosis is the battery drain problem is caused by
multiple of Microsoft Vista Updates in combination. However, Lenovo/IBM
admitted that it would take time to ascertain the combination.