[WINDOWS 7,8][SLEEP/WAKE/BATTERY DRAIN ISSUES]POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS - LAPTOP AND TABLET USERS

After a mind-blowing amount of forum posts I've read regarding windows 7 and 8 sleep/wake/battery drain power issues, I decided to write this so maybe it'll help someone troubleshoot their tablet/laptop. Moderators/MS people - read GENERAL REMARKS section, you'll find it a very constructive albeit bitter feedback on windows 7 and 8 power issues. Users - straight off to TROUBLESHOOTING section lower on. 

GENERAL REMARKS - WINDOWS 7 AND 8 POWER MANAGEMENT, SLEEP PREVENTION REQUESTS, ISOLATING FAULTY DRIVERS/APPS/SERVICES

Funny thing is - such issues may not be any OEM/driver vendor fault at all. I'd say it's rather irrational how windows in organized here as a tablet or even a laptop OS in general . When I push the sleep button, it means that I intend the device to sleep

• it's unacceptable that after a few hours of "sleep" I find my tablet, supposedly "sleeping" with a 0% on the unreplacable battery, which by now is physically damaged due to prolonged exposure to low charge.

Because some people have thought that maybe we should prevent the device from sleeping when there's an audio stream open, a remote client, whatever. Well, maybe it's good for a desktop pc that has grid power, but on a battery powered device like a laptop or tablet, A LOT of people bump into really infuriating issues of sleep/wake/battery drain - and from what I see on various forums (tabletpcreview, lenovo and samsung support, technet, ms answers), it's really, really bad.

When I push the power button, the device has to sleep. Period. Allowing "devices" or drivers to prevent the tablet from sleeping when I clearly want it to sleep is insane and causes tremendous power issues on mobile device. You should pop a monit every dang time a driver/service/whatever wants to be able to prevent sleep, and ask ME for permission to allow this thing to drain my battery. If not - FORCE sleep.

What am I supposed to tell to quite a lot of people who ask me about impressions on using a windows 8 tablet? It's nice, but the driver situation sucks big time.. pass on it. And the OS itself, even though has a nice touch overlay, is just a desktop OS pretending to work nice on a battery powered device. It's not. It turns out that mobile power mangement is a big time failure.

This issues have been going on since windows 7 on laptops. And now it's windows 8 tablets, just this time you wreck your battery, you can't replace it and all the money you splashed on an expensive windows 8 tablet goes to trash. I'll be just honest. Samsung support is completely incompetent on such issues. I also messaged Lenovo support and I hope they will take this more seriously. However, it's not just one driver, one problem. It's a much more general case, it's how the OS is organized and how it deals with sleep preventing requests from various sources. This sleep/wake/battery drain is like number 1 problem category with windows 8 tablets I see so far. Microsoft needs to make changes in the OS or the OEMs will be under a spanking shower from the consumers for a long, long time.

MS has software design guidelines concerning power management, but relying on hudreds of companies to provide intelligently written software is like praying for a miracle. Won't happen. MS should be smarter than just putting up a webpage saying: 1) write smart software 2) if you don't, we don't care, not our fault anyway.

There should be an OS mechanism to prevent such battery drain, manage sleep prevention rights and request, monitor battery power usage per app, service, single driver - so as to allow the user to find the power problem cause, isolate the messed up driver/service/app/whatever and shut it down/disable it. On a tablet PC, battery life is vital, so it would be better to ask me, as a user, every time, do I want to allow this service or that device/driver to prevent the computer from sleep. Windows 8 manages this behind my back, and then it shows me an infuriating surprise of completely drained and physically damaged irreplacable battery. Like it's the user's job to figure which one of a hundred drivers and programs I need to work could cause problem - prior to actually installing it. Just set up some ground rules and force all those sloppy partners to comply.

And there was not a single word in the manual of my windows 8 tablet, on all the things I wrote down below, that affect battery life, that can completely mess the user experience and physically damage the battery - even though this is OS-design-as-bug that has been going for years now, since windows 7 at least.

You know, it's like windows computers run just fine - unless you actualy use them. Take it out of a box, runs pretty, install some stuff you need for work, tweak some settings and you're in a mess, bro. Truth is - power settings, sleep settings are a brothel and MS should finally set some ground rules here. Not just guidelines. Ground f.....g rules.

There's a thing with IE10 addons - if they impact startup time of the browser too much, a monit appears, "this addon slows down the browser, do you want to shut it down?" And usually, h..l yes I want. Some of these install in a sneaky way, even without asking me for permission. Such things happen. So it's intelligent software design from the IE10 team to let me, as a user, know about this and enable me to easily fix this.

MS is playing dumb, pretending it's not their problem, but the truth is, if windows is to work on a tablet like it should, sleep preventing mechanism must be managed in a more strict way. Not only each time an app/service/drives that is not vital asks for a permission to run in the background, ask me. Ask me till I'm fed up with answering, then ask me if you're not to ask me ever again. Example - how the h..l I'm supposed to know that enabling public folders can prevent sleep? And it can (srvnet issue, described lower on). Or windows media player sharing. Or it can be crappy drivers from a subcontractor, how am I supposed to find and isolate these? There's a "Network and Sharing Center", there should be "Battery Juice and Sleep Control Center" in the control panel. I'm serious.

MS has time to write some stupid finger painting apps ("Fresh Paint") but it doesn't have time to seriously and responsibly address issues with battery and sleep that are going on for years now. So now MS partners are selling +700$ tablets that can't even sleep. It's the sloppy driver producer fault? Nope. It's the OEM fault? Nope. It's MS fault? Nope. It's just a brothel, that's all. But of all these MS is in the most capable position to fix this by setting ground rules on power management and forcing them down partners' throats.

You know, people read reviews these days. I knew about a bunch of issues with mine ativ 500T before I bought it, but I wanted it nevertheless cause I decided that with such issues I can live. I have serious doubts that I'd have bought it if I knew about the power/sleep issues. Spending three days troubleshooting power management? Yeah, nice commercial.

Now please pass this on to some software designer, and if he says that such control mechanisms and this whole battery juice monitoring and control center are unnecessary or "we don't have time to do this" - do me a favour, punch this guy in the face. Best regards from a user perespective.

So I hope everyone who has the same problem as I, will find something here that can possibly help and that will make your device usable.

TROUBLESHOOTING - GENERAL - TABLETS AND LAPTOPS, WINDOWS 7 AND 8

Quite possibly you have a driver or service that prevents the device from sleeping. Nice explanation here with possible solution (example) - http://www.jasonhartman.net/2012/06/windows-7-wont-go-to-sleep-mode-audio.html

Run command prompt on admin priviliges - start menu or screen, cmd, run as admin. In cmd, powercfg /energy - this will write you a html file to windows/system32 with report on power issues - cut this file, paste somewhere else (you can have problems opening it from windows/system32) - look for any red highlighted error sections there, those prevent sleep.

On ativ 500T and Vivo Tab, be sure to disconnect the keyboard dock before running cmd, powercfg /energy.

Possible solutions here - you can bump on "srvnet" (remote clients and windows media player sharing) - try going to Network and Sharing Center in control panel and disabling any sharing in advanced options (left menu). Also, services.msc, here disable windows media player sharing service.

Also, in my case it was Intel SST Audio Device/Realtek I2S (these two are interconnected somehow) - it means an audio stream is open/not closed properly. Example - google voice addon in chrome can prevent your pc from sleeping - but it could be anything, adobe flash content in the browser, app - like Steam, or an alternative virtual keyboard for example - TouchPal for windows 8 is fine though, checked this one, it's all clear. More - VLC, file sharing apps...

For this Intel SST audio device, simple workaround is to shut down volume to zero% - more sophisticated solution here - http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-slate-tablets/Poor-Connected-Standby-Battery-Life-on-TPT2/m-p/1105755#M23740

Also, in control panel, device manager, in properties window of any device, make sure there is no device that there is allowed to prevent the computer from sleeping. Example: device manager, sound,video and game controllers, Realtek I2S, right click, properties, power management, "allow computer to turn off this device to save power" (YES), "allow this device to wake computer" (NO).

For a list of devices that can prevent sleep:

cmd, powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

Even if you have no devices that can prevent sleep, you can still get sleep prevention requests!

For a list of requests for preventing sleep:

cmd, powercfg -requests

For a list of wake timers (those can automatically wake your computer too):

cmd, powercfg -waketimers

For information on last wake and it's causes (if the cause info is available):

cmd, powercfg -lastwake

And again, report on power management with possible culprits highlighted in red:

cmd, powercfg /energy

To override sleep prevention requests (case sensitive) - example on the 'srvnet':

cmd, "powercfg -requestsoverride driver \FileSystem\srvnet system" - might not stay after reboot.

Btw, powercfg command line options - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748940(v=ws.10).aspx

To sum up - possible culprits and solutions:

• audio device - in my case, shutting down the volume to zero% removes the sleep prevention hook and allows the tablet to sleep
• srvnet - windows media player sharing, remote desktop, public folders - disable all these + windows media player sharing service in services.msc. Also, being member of a network homegroup can be an issue.
• adobe flash content in the browser - close the tab, preferably with the browser itself
• google voice addon in the browser
• disable google chat on iGoogle - remove it from iGoogle (if iGoogle even still exists? I'm basing this on an old blog post)
• basically, could be anything - infuriating, huh? And this is exactly what I mean by unintelligent (euphemism) operating system design.

TROUBLESHOOTING - TASK SCHEDULER, UPDATES, ANTIVIRUS SCANS ETC

If you have huge battery juice loses during the night, on sleep or "connected standby" (using "" cause it's just marketing BS not working as it should) - it's possible you have a scheduled task in the Task Scheduler - a task that kicks in an then repeats regularly the whole night - and possibly one that was auto-added by some program without you even knowing it's there....

Open Task Scheduler and look at the list. It could be google update (got chrome?) that kicks in at 01:00 at night and then repeats every hour even if you're on battery, and EVEN IF YOU'RE SHUTDOWN. Could be scheduled antivirus scan (say, MS security essentials

• here, you may have to disable scanner completely) or sth else. Reference discussion here - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-connected-standby-is-incredibly/adad208c-8c91-42b7-a9d8-bbcf3acad1d1?page=2

TROUBLESHOOTING - WINDOWS 8 TABLETS - SAMSUNG SMART PC 500T, ASUS VIVO TAB TF810, LENOVO THINKPAD TABLET 2

In the particular case of the new windows 8 tablets based on intel clovertrail SOC - quite oftentimes sleep/wake/battery drain issues are related to faulty (crappy) drivers. For the rollbacks suggested, I provide skydrive links lower on for the older, suposedly better versions.

• bluetooth - on ativ 500T - solution is to rollback from 12.0.0.3600 to 12.0.0.2200 - a long but valuable discussion here - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-hardware/win-8-samsung-ativ-smart-pc-bsod-please-help/6d49e2fd-c928-4789-ae23-9b8d71211cdf
• sd card - on ativ 500T - "solution" is to not use sd card...
• intel graphics drivers ("Internal VGA Intel") - on Ativ500T, Vivo Tab TF810 - solution is to rollback from 9.14.3.1128 to 9.14.3.1087 - the referenced discussion on bluetooth also has intel graphics driver talk on page 2.
• in case of TPT2, somehow it's often not drivers, but rather that old thing with sleep prevention management in windows - so basically the stuff from TROUBLESHOOTING - GENERAL section - and TPT2 people, you might want to have a look at this discussion
• http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-slate-tablets/Poor-Connected-Standby-Battery-Life-on-TPT2/td-p/1064553/page/2

Driver download:

• broadcomm bluetooth driver 12.0.0.2200 - http://sdrv.ms/10lMlQl
• intel graphics 9.14.3.1087 - http://sdrv.ms/Zcryj0
• for anything else - this site is good, at least for ativ500T: http://www.driver-notebook.com/

A suggestion that will possibly save your tablet's battery from irreversible physical damade due to crappy OS sleep/wake/juice management

Go to control panel, power options, whatever plan you're using - change plan settings, change advanced power settings, here - in batery, low battery level 20%, low battery action - hibernate, critical battery level 15%, critical battery action - shutdown.

You should not allow you battery to be either completel discharged or completely charged, it causes physical damage to the electrodes of li-ion/li-poly (the same thing) batteries. Just stay somewhere in between and do not allow the charge to go very low or very high, and it will hold bigger capacity for longer time.

This is in case you think you solved sleep/wake/power drain issues, but your tablet can still wake at night all by itself cause of some app/driver/service/whatever, and it will pop in and out of sleep the whole night, doing some stupid tasks, consuming battery power so as to give you a morning surprise of 1% on the battery and believe me, you don't want to see this happen to you.

FURTHER SUGGESTIONS ON DIAGNOSING POWER DRAIN ISSUES

• Task manager CPU stats. Wipe these stats, reboot the computer, not use it but let is go right into connected standby, leave it for a few hours and see what's showing in task manager or even better - sysinternals process explorer (task manager on steroids). It can be not very conclusive though. The problem with this, this method can be only partially efficient at finding issues caused not by apps/services, but rather by drivers.
• Event Viewer - any power/wireless connectivity/cpu related logs from the period your device was in connected standby. Just filter by source and time.
• DISABLING SERVICES - IMPORTANT - sometimes, even if you disable a service in services.msc (task manager 'services' tab>open services), it can REMAIN active. Google Update is an example. I disabled its activation tasks in Task Scheduler, disabled it in services.msc AND STILL there's one thing you need to do - run>msconfig, here 'services' tab, filter by all non-microsoft and preferably disable most non-microsoft here. There's also googleupdate here... On my Smart PC 500T I left Intel thermal framework, SamsungConfiguration, SW-Update and TabletServiceISD.
• I also suggest, if you can, disable wireless connectivity for sleeping. If it's an issue with the wireless driver it might not solve your problem, but it might decrease it (and the broadcomm wireless driver found on clovertrail devices apparently is the cause of many connected standby issues..).

WHAT HELPED ME PARTIALLY BUT SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE POWER DRAIN DURING CONNECTED STANDBY

Don't want to write all this again - just see my post from May 17, 2013 here - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/incredible-battery-drain-during-connected-standby/92de7544-4514-40e8-b11d-3e18537f3de3 - older Intel DPTF drivers from acer and Lenovo Wifi driver instead of broadcomm's (links to driver files within this reference)