Trying to address sleepstudy offenders..

[Michael Lovett]

So my SP3 has been losing about 30% battery every night while sleeping. The sleepstudy report shows these as the top offenders:

I'm trying to figure out how to address the top few ones.

1. As far as the VirtualBox offender, this surprises me because I am doing a system restart just before bed (just before putting the unit to sleep) and there are no virtual machines running. But somehow, this driver is still active and hogging up the battery. I see other people have complained about this adapter on other devices, such as the Sp2.

Does anyone have any experience with this issue?

Also, does anyone have any experience using Microsoft's virtual technology on the SP3 - I'm wondering if it has its own set of issues, or if it works well on the Sp3??

2. As far as the #2 offender; any insights? What is the wireless controller doing in wee hours of the morning, 82% of the time, that's drinking down the battery juice??

3,4, and 5. Same questions - what are these things doing during sleep??

Also, does any one know what "Activator" and "NCSI" mean on this report?

Any insights would be helpful. Until I get this figured out I think I may have to stop using sleep and just do a shutdown all the time, which would be a shame.

Michael

 

[unruledboy]

shut it down....

 

[Liam2349]

Perhaps VirtualBox is running at startup? Go to Task Manager, click the start-up tab and see what's listed. If there is anything running at start-up that doesn't need to be, disable it.

 

[bluegrass]

shut it down....

Ditto. I would like to hear a good best practice reason to not to, especially if you don't keep it plugged in.

 

[Michael Lovett]

Well, for bed-time, I agree.. no reason to not shut it down and save the battery juice for the morning.

But what the sleepstudy reveals is that the top offenders are probably sucking down battery juice even when you are using the device (ie while on battery) even if you are not using the corresponding software. And that's the problem.

For example, even if I am not running a Virtual Box on the desktop, it's adapter is in the background reducing my battery life. So while some people might be getting 7+ hours of battery life, I've been getting something closer to 4ish. Again, not a problem for sleep, but a problem when using the device most of the day on battery..

Unfortunately, I need virtual cpu ability for my job, so my options appear to be: a) live with this issue and hope for a fix from Oracle b) switch to hyper-V, which apparently has its own issues related to battery power, or c) uninstall the Oracle VirtualBox software when I'm not going to use and when I want max battery life, then re-install it 5 days a week for work (not really a practical solution)..

 

[jnjroach]

The VirtualBox Network Adapter has caused other issues on Connected Standby Machines, such as disabling the ability to use wireless monitors. It is preventing the machine from entering CS, the likely culprit is the Virtual Switch....

Another option is to use something like Azure or even a Remote Server for your VM needs, I personally use my MSDN Subscription to create Azure VMs and have never gone over my $200/month allotment....