Laptop battery discharging when in sleep mode

[apeliz]

Hi all,

I have an Inspiron 1525 that is one year old. Recently the battery will be completely dead when I try to turn on the laptop and will not power on unless I plug it in. The battery meter will be at 0% when it starts up, but recharges normally when plugged in. When I unplug the laptop and close the lid (which puts it into sleep mode) the battery will be completely dead by the next morning even if it was at 100% before I closed it. I don't know why the battery is discharging completely so quickly when the computer isn't even running.

Could this just be a problem with my battery? Or is the laptop not actually sleeping when I close it, but continually using up battery power? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[LookinAround]

Note there's a difference between "Sleep" vs. "Hibernation"
> Sleep mode still requires power (It should be minimal power but definitely still draws some power)
> Hibernation requires zero power

That said, i still wouldn't expect a good battery to discharge overnight on sleep mode so you probably still have an issue with your battery holding a charge

 

[apeliz]

Yeah I would expect the battery to drain a little in sleep mode but not from 100% to 0% in just a few hours. It just started doing this a couple weeks ago. And if I just leave the laptop on, the battery drains at a normal rate, which takes about two and a half hours. It seems like the battery drains at the same rate even if the computer is sleeping...I've heard it make the shutdown noise after being closed for a couple hours and when I open it again, a screen comes up and says Windows did not shut down properly (like it does if the battery runs out). I have the laptop set to sleep when I close the lid, but I'm wondering if it's actually going to sleep?

 

[DelJo63]

I have a Toshiba laptop and use the Hibernate feature daily. In fact, sometimes I see
it go into sleep mode instead (one lite slowly flashes yellow, when hibernate shows two green lites).
Reseting the option restores the desired hibernation.

Yes, hibernation takes longer to restart, but as you have found, sleep eats the battery which is very precious to a laptop user.

If you can't get hiberation to fully shutdown/restart correctly:

1. run->cleanmgr to free old temp files
2. run CHKDSK /F to make sure it's save to do ...
3. a defrag of the HD
4. download Pagedefrag and run it to compress your registry files and the pagefile.sys

Lastly, how old is your battery? -- they just don't last forever