Faulty Microsoft Driver Saps Intel Core Duo power

Critical_ writes "Tom's Hardware recently discovered a bug in Microsoft's ACPI driver implementation under Windows XP SP2 that causes a loss of more than one hour of battery time when connecting any USB 2.0 device to an Intel Core Duo based system. Apparently Microsoft, Intel and ODMs have known of this problem under a confidentiality agreement since July 12, 2005 via (a still private) Knowledge Base article KB899179. The bug lies in the asynchronous scheduler component inadvertently being left running causing Windows' internal task scheduler (ITS) to treat it as a running process involving the attached device. This in turn prevents the ITS from powering down the processor into one of the ACPI sleep states causing the system to use more battery power. At this time there seems to be no fix. Strangely, single-core systems and AMD systems are not affected. This leads one to wonder if it is truely a software problem or if there a much larger hardware problem that may affect Core Duo equipped Apple systems."

Comments

Why?

[Stefman]

Why does the last phrase target specifically Apple computers since the beginning mentions Win XP. Obviously, this affects XP laptops with a core duo.

Submitter didn't RFTA

[rosalindavenue]

Quote: "Since Microsoft's drivers are now believed to be directly involved, then all of Apple's upcoming MacBook Pro systems - which use the Core Duo processor and 945 chipset - should be unaffected by this issue. We have yet to attain access to a MacBook Pro to verify this." Why bring Apple into a conversation about a defective XP driver?

Comon..

[evilNomad]

"Strangely, single-core systems and AMD systems are not affected."

So once again we have a chance to bash Intel, perfect!

Did you ever stop to consider that maybe that specific state, which cannot be reached, is only utilized by the Core Duo? Maybe if AMD had a laptop dual core chip we'd see the same behavior.. But hey, if we can make Intel look bad because of a Microsoft bug, then we are two for two!

Re:confidentiality agreement

[dysk]

Isnt this a basis for a class action fraud suit? If not, it should be investigated by the SEC at least.

The SEC investigates fraud which victimizes shareholders. This is fraud against consumers, a much less important group.

Re:And thanks to the confidiality agreement

[MadTinfoilHatter]

Why can't they just be honest and say "this is the problem and this is what we're doing about it"

Because they don't want people to know there is a problem, and that they're not doing anything about it, maybe?

YEAAAAHHHHHH...

[CODiNE]

This article really pinpoints to me one of the best things of all about Apple switching to Intel, REAL OS COMPETITION. Now at last if Windows seems dog slow, you can't claim it's the Intel chip... or when the Finder seems the suckage, you KNOW it's the Finder and not the PPC chip running at a lower MHz. Once we start seeing these systems getting into people's hands and they notice a real difference between the two OS' on the same hardware you can bet they'll be whining about it and performance will definitely be a focus for both OS venders. In the past they could have been lax about it... thinking "But what can they compare it to?" but now if they can show that Quartz drawing is 3x slower than DirectX or vice versa, you can bet there will be performance updates in the near future. This is better for all of us.

P.S. Linux doesn't really count in this manner because it gets ignored as a "geek OS" and not really something anybody can run.