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Battery Drain after Shutdown

rjbinney

New Member
I forgot this site even existed (Sorry!) when I reached out to MSFT to try to resolve this issue. I signed on today for other, unrelated help... And saw this thread... I'm in the same boat... I have learned to really like my SP4, but the battery issues are perplexing. Between this and my Android phone, I'm afraid to even attempt to do any work on a plane... I get maybe 2 1/2 hours, tops.

Really Weak Batteries
 
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next_milenium

Member
I did another test by shutting off at 90% battery. Turning it back on after 26 hours the battery was at 86%.
So it lost 4% over 26 hours and I guess that is acceptable. I wish it lost less but better than losing 5% over 6 hours like jeffrodrig's battery.
 

sharpuser

Administrator
Staff member
Here's something to consider:

I wonder if some or most of the problem is due to the way the battery charge is computed. Perhaps the computer's estimate of charge percentage is a little lower (3 to 5 percentage points) after a restart because of two reasons:

1) Just the act of shutting down and restarting takes some energy
2) The computer may more accurately determine battery life after the restart, due to electronics sensing, cooler temperature, fewer processes running, etc. Engineers would likely be aware of these sensitivities, and may have designed any error in the estimate to not overstate battery life. The battery life may be actually a few percentage points longer than the estimate.
 

jeffrodrig

New Member
Regarding the SP4 requiring energy to shut down, I can verify that this isn't an issue relating to this matter of the battery drainage. Yesterday, after using up the charge of the SP4 all the way down to 5%, I charged it all the way back up to 100%. From there, I performed a full shutdown, then left the SP4 on the charger for an additional minute afterward, then removed the charger from the SP4. This morning, 20 hours later, I powered on the SP4. The charge was reported at 87%. So a 13% charge drop in a 20 hour time span after the SP4 was fully charged, fully shut down and then removed from the charger one minute after the full shutdown.

Again to reiterate from a prior post regarding this issue, there is an online Microsoft community support forum thread elsewhere specifically regarding this issue that has been going on now for over a year, and still no resolution to this reported issue. In fact, in that thread, more and more people are continuing to report this battery drainage issue, and Microsoft has not provided a sufficient resolution to it. Over the months, they have had support reps in that forum provide input, but no sufficient resolution. In fact, one person had his SP4 replaced three times, and the battery drainage issue has occurred on each replacement SP4. Microsoft has severely dropped the ball in not properly addressing this matter, and if long term reliability is a concern to anyone considering the purchase of a present or future Surface device, Microsoft's track record of very unsatisfactory support of this SP4 battery drainage issue needs to be taken into serious consideration.
 
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next_milenium

Member
So I did another test by shutting down my SP4 at 84%. Today I powered it up after about 20 hrs and it had 81%.

So mine is not as bad ad jeffrodrig's machine but certainly not ideal as it really shouldn't lose 4-5% battery every 24 hours after a full shutdown and nothing is using energy.

There has to be something we don't know that is running even after the shutdown thus draining battery. I know this is not an ipad or android tablet but I have used many tablets that does not drain any amount of battery after several days of being shutdown.
 

sharpuser

Administrator
Staff member
I did a test on my two Surface Book computers, which show no drainage. The issue indeed seems to be the SP4, as discussed in this tread. One would think the problem could be solved, since not all Surface computers are affected.

Surface Book
Normal shutdown for 10 hours, battery 96% before, 96% after.

Surface Book 2 (15")
Normal shutdown for 10 hours, battery 100% before, 100% after.
 
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next_milenium

Member
I did a test on my two Surface Book computers, which show no drainage. The issue indeed seems to be the SP4, as discussed in this tread. One would think the problem could be solved, since not all Surface computers are affected.

Surface Book
Normal shutdown for 10 hours, battery 96% before, 96% after.

Surface Book 2 (15")
Normal shutdown for 10 hours, battery 100% before, 100% after.


Do you have fast startup disabled on your Surface Book? I remember vaguely that I had to disable that AND use the full shutdown command to minimize the battery drain while being shutdown.

I kind of doubt you have the fast startup disabled and if so I'm really puzzled on what is causing this issue as my SP4 is basically bone stock without much software installed and no modifications (other than disabling the fast startup in trying to solve this battery drain issue).
 

sharpuser

Administrator
Staff member
My "Fast Startup" is checked as shown, so it is indeed enabled.
For Shutdown, I used the normal method, bottom-left Taskbar Windows menu.

Annotation.png
 

sharpuser

Administrator
Staff member
For now, it may be helpful for you to have a desktop shortcut for your full shutdown.

HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM FULL SHUTDOWN SHORTCUT

1) On the desktop, right-click New, Text Document. Double-click on the new document.
2) Type the command
Code:
shutdown /s /f /t 0
3) Save As ShutdownFull.bat, type: All Files

An shortcut will appear on the desktop. Double-click to run

Annotation.png


Annotation.jpg
 

James Birke

New Member
I have a surface pro 4 i5 4GB that has all the latest updates.

When I "shutdown" from the menu, I find the battery still drains over night (5-10%). I mainly use a work laptop so I only occasionally use my surface. So after a few days of non use, I sometimes find it completely dead.

I tried a shortcut to shutdown "C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /f /t 0" hoping this will fully shutdown and prevent battery drain but unfortunately I am still seeing similar battery drain.

Is there a way to completely shutdown so I don't see battery drain?

Thanks in advance.
I created a bat file using that shutdown command line shown above. It doesn't work. Is the structure of that line correct?
 

rjbinney

New Member
That is how mine is setup and it shuts down fine.

However, I still lose about 0.6 percent power per unplugged hour, even using the "full" shutdown.

Not great!
 
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