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Microsoft Looking Into Windows 7 Battery Failures

Posted by kdawson on from the daisy-dais-y dept.

Jared writes "Microsoft says it is investigating reports of notebooks with poor battery life with Windows 7, as first reported by users on Microsoft TechNet. These users claim their batteries were working just fine under Windows XP and/or Windows Vista, and others are saying that battery problems occur on their new Windows 7 PCs. Under Win7, certain machines spit out the following warning message: 'Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly.' The warning is normally issued after using the computer's BIOS to determine whether a battery needs replacement, but in this case it appears the operating system and not the battery is the problem. These customers say their PC's battery life is noticeably lower, with some going as far as to say that it has become completely unusable after a few weeks. To make matters worse, others are reporting that downgrading to an earlier version of Windows doesn't fix the problem."

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. My battery died by VanHalensing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This article is exactly what happened to me. Battery life started fine. A week later, that message. Within a month the battery went from 90% to 3% and did an emergency hibernate. Moving back to XP didn't fix it either, it burned out that battery. I've since gone back to XP (thankfully I had a spare battery, they don't make my model anymore). I hope they fix this before I buy my next computer.

    1. Re:My battery died by shawb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This could be an example of The law of very large numbers. Basically, this states that people have very little intuitive grasp of statistics and so believe that many unrelated things are indeed connected. Also related to the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. It would be possible for a statisticion to determine whether the rate of battery failure after installing Windows 7 was expected, but that wouldn't convince anyone whose actually knows someone whose battery failed shortly after the installation. Or even not so shortly after.

      Of course, it is possible that there is some bad code somewhere in Windows 7's power management that allows batteries to drain and then recharge continuously wearing them out, and a proper statistical analysis would reveal this as well.

      --
      I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
    2. Re:My battery died by oldosadmin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To be fair to GP, I bought a new battery (old computer) and had the same thing happen within weeks on my Windows 7 tablet.

      --
      Jay | http://oldos.org
    3. Re:My battery died by oboylet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your two year-old laptop battery dies, and the first place you go is to blame the operating system? And the fact that it no longer works in any OS doesn't give you any hints, either? Come on, this isn't the toughest mystery you'll face this week.

      I don't know about GP, but the laptop I bought for going back to grad school came preloaded with Vista and included a Win7 upgrade coupon. When the disc arrived and I installed it, the machine wasn't more than 4 months old. I had the exact same experience and the battery went from functional to a brick in about two weeks after win7 hit the hardware. Fortunately for me, HP shipped me a replacement battery. It's an anecdote; not data, but it might be part of a larger trend.

  2. explains my old Dell Inspiron 6000 by alen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Put Windows 7 on there to give to my inlaws and i thought it was a coincidence that the battery died. still works when plugged in, but battery life is like 10 minutes.

    formattted it and put Vista on it because the graphics were glitchy with windows 7 and the problem is still there

  3. FWIW, no problems here... by spywhere · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I put a clean install of Windows 7 on a new HDD in my HP dv7t, which came with Vista. The battery has been fine. I have also deployed several new Win7 laptops, and installed Win7 on two or three other laptops, with no issues.

  4. Re:Not experience this by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm under the impression that repeatedly charging/discharging the last couple of percent of a litium battery can very much reduce its life. I seem to remember someone from the OLPC project saying they extended battery life by avoiding charging the battery to full charge. As an anecdote, I have a laptop that I leave plugged in at almost all times. When I do run it on batteries, the battery last about the same amount of time as when I bought it. On the machines that I carry around, use and chjarge regularly, The battery life is significantly reduced after 6 months of use. If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that the OS is constantly charging and discharging teh top couple of percent of abttery capacity. O f course, I'm neither and electrical, or chemical engineer.

  5. Re:Not experience this by Xest · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I understand that, but what specifically about it allows for permanent battery damage? Can commands to discharge and so forth really be issued to the battery in a manner so as to permanently damage and decrease the life of it in a short space of time? Is there no protection at hardware level against it also for example?

    If there is no hardware protection then does that not also leave the door open for intentionally malicious software such as viruses and trojans to kill batteries?

    I guess my question would've been better phrased as "if it is possible, then why is it possible for software to kill a battery?".