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I got 2 hours of battery life!?

tony8154

Member
Hello everyone.

I just got the surface today, (i5 256) and set it up with a few average programs that I use on my laptop
video player
messenger
itunes
torrent downloader

normal stuff that you would use.

well, after fully charging the surface to 100%, i decided to watch a downloaded 1080p movie Zero Dark Thirty in bedn that i played via micro SD.

all programs were shut off, except the messenger app (it's called Line messenger)

the brightness was reduced to around 30-40%, and raised to about 50-60% 2 hours into the movie.
I was using headphones with the keyboard attached

the entire movie was only about 2 hours and 30 minutes, but the surface shut down before the movie ended..
WTF??

This can't be normal can it? Please help! I was planning on using the surface as a note taking tool, but if I only get 2 hours, this can't be good :(

Please help!
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
When you first setup any Windows machine it takes up to 72 hours start seeing decent battery life as it indexes the drive, pulls down updates and tries to optimize the system.

But I've rarely seen that level of performance.

Also, you didn't tell us what Media Player Application you were using. Usual culprits for poor battery life are Win32 Applications not optimized for mobile computing, previous builds of Chrome (Prior to v. 38), Torrent Applications and Communication Applications and lastly over aggressive Antivirus Software.

I get 6.5-9 hours of battery on my Surface Pro 3 with both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

From an elevated Command Prompt run "powercfg /energy" and copy the HTML File from System32 to your Documents folder and open and investigate what used up you battery life.
 

Liam2349

Active Member
Hello everyone.

I just got the surface today, (i5 256) and set it up with a few average programs that I use on my laptop
video player
messenger
itunes
torrent downloader

normal stuff that you would use.

well, after fully charging the surface to 100%, i decided to watch a downloaded 1080p movie Zero Dark Thirty in bedn that i played via micro SD.

all programs were shut off, except the messenger app (it's called Line messenger)

the brightness was reduced to around 30-40%, and raised to about 50-60% 2 hours into the movie.
I was using headphones with the keyboard attached

the entire movie was only about 2 hours and 30 minutes, but the surface shut down before the movie ended..
WTF??

This can't be normal can it? Please help! I was planning on using the surface as a note taking tool, but if I only get 2 hours, this can't be good :(

Please help!

Ok, first thing is to stop panicking. The problem is most likely that you have only just got it, and new computers aren't perfect out of the box.

You will have 100+ updates and they will come in several packages. So go and update, restart, check for updates again, check again, check again, and when it says you have them all, check again later.

In the mean time, go to Start and type cmd, then press ctrl+shift+enter and run as admin.

Type 'cd c:\users\username' and then type 'powercfg /energy'. This will run an energy diagnostic and save it to your user area. Then open it and see if it shows any warnings, just to see if there is an issue.
 

ptrkhh

Active Member
I just got the surface today, (i5 256) and set it up with a few average programs that I use on my laptop
Check the Task Manager (tap-and-hold on the taskbar in Desktop) to see which app uses lots of CPU resource. Most likely, since you mentioned that you just unboxed the Surface, "Windows Modules Installer Worker" takes about 20-50% of the CPU. If yes, then it is normal. It is installing all the updates as well as optimizes Windows and applying synced features such as languages if you have another Windows 8 device.
You can also check the "App History" tab to see which app takes lots of CPU resource since you got the device. Click "Options" then "Show history for all processes" to show desktop and system programs as well.

previous builds of Chrome (Prior to v. 38)
The issue hasn't been resolved yet. The version 38 only fixed the high DPI support.
 

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
Also, if you are going to playa HD movie better do it from the SSD. In that way you we powering one less device.
 
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tony8154

Member
Also, you didn't tell us what Media Player Application you were using.

It's a media player program that I use on my other laptop that I'm used to so I really don't want to change. Here's the link for it.

http://player.gomlab.com/eng/

I just checked with their site for the versions and it does say it's compatible with Win 8.1. It also says there is a windows tablet version. I suppose that version uses less battery? That will be the first thing that I'll try I guess...

I tried using Chrome at first but everything seemed to be blurry compared to IE. People were saying that all I need to do was install Chrome Beta? I think I might have done that step but I'm not too sure as all the text remains blurry and seems to be at a different aspect ratio compared to IE. The current Chrome version installed on the Surface is Version 40.0.2214.10 beta-m (64-bit).

I use MuTorrent, and it was not running at the time. I made sure I just didn't exit the program but also went to the system tray and manually exited the program.

I did not install any anti virus program yet but I do plan on running AVG.

How in the world do you get 6.5 to 9??? Please do share your settings! I wouldn't mind sacrificing some performance if I were to get 9 hours of battery life!!



You will have 100+ updates and they will come in several packages. So go and update, restart, check for updates again, check again, check again, and when it says you have them all, check again later.

Where do I go to check updates? I ran windows update and it says everything is up to date. Is there some other place that I need to go to intall updates?

Also some people have mentioned that there were firmware updates and the graphics card update as well? I'm not sure how to do this. Please advise :(


Check the Task Manager (tap-and-hold on the taskbar in Desktop) to see which app uses lots of CPU resource. Most likely, since you mentioned that you just unboxed the Surface, "Windows Modules Installer Worker" takes about 20-50% of the CPU. If yes, then it is normal. It is installing all the updates as well as optimizes Windows and applying synced features such as languages if you have another Windows 8 device.
You can also check the "App History" tab to see which app takes lots of CPU resource since you got the device. Click "Options" then "Show history for all processes" to show desktop and system programs as well.
The issue hasn't been resolved yet. The version 38 only fixed the high DPI support.

I just checked now and Chrome Browser seems to be using the most CPU%. That's because I have it set up to open 16 tabs when I first launch it. But yesterday Chrome was closed and was not running. If I set it up as yesterday, the one on the top when sorted by CPU% is ...

ah ok. It shows that the media player is running a 32 bit program. Could this be the issue?

Anyway here is the top list:

1. Gom Player (32 bit) CPU 9 - 14% Memory 180MB
2. Windows audio device graph isolation CPU 1% Memory 7.6 MB
3. Windows desktop manager CPU 0.5% Memory 16.7MB

I put the list in alphabetical, but I do not see Windows Modules Installer Worker currently running.

I went to App History, and the ones that useed the most CPU time are
1. Host Processes for Windows Services
2. Google Chrome
3. Gom Player
4. Internet Explorer
5. COM Surrogate


Also, if you are going to playa HD movie better do it from the SSD. In that way you we powering one less device.

Yes this is probably good advice. I'll try that out this time. Thank you.

Good to know....I refuse to use Chrome so I admittedly was going via the feedback within these forums....

The only reason I want to use Chrome is that it seems to sync better with Google and you can sync your tabs and history with other devices. Also, I usually have my PC setup so that Chrome loads all the tabs I read every day on boot up. That's 16 tabs, and IE only allows to load 7 or 8 on bootup.



Anyway thanks for the information people. Hope to hear more from you all very soon. Thanks!
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
I'm using the stock settings, but the only Win32 programs I've installed are from Office 2013 Pro Plus, the rest of what I use is MUI Apps.
 

kundas1

Well-Known Member
also it wasn't mentioned in this thread is your SP3 will need a couple of days to condition the battery through charging and then discharging the battery to below 10%... do this for the first 3 charges of your SP3, then once the battery is "conditioned" you will see slower battery discharge rates and longer battery life... so don't panic yet lol
 
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tony8154

Member
ok so I manually ran an update check and it says that I have 64 updates available.

also it wasn't mentioned in this thread is your SP3 will need a couple of days to condition the battery through charging and then discharging the battery to below 10%... do this for the first 3 charges of your SP3, then once the battery is "conditioned" you will see slower battery discharge rates and longer battery life... so don't panic yet lol

I thought battery condition was pre lithium ion batteries? I guess not? OK I'll try that too.

Here in Hong Kong, the return policy is within 10 days and only with a defect, so I need to do everything as soon as possbible.
 
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