surface book battery drain while shut down

Anonymous
2015-12-09T16:09:58+00:00

Split from this thread.

I have been noticing that when I shutdown my surface book, when I power it on the next day the battery has drained some. If I leave it off for a couple of days it will drain down from 100% to around 85% or lower.

I disabled fast startup... and then just decided to disable hibernation altogether. That didn't help.

I have windows hello disabled, but that shouldn't matter anyway since I'm shutting it down, not sleeping.

Some searching and I found a general windows 10 issue with the "Intel Management Engine Interface" driver. Some say that v11 can cause this issue. One solution that I have seen suggested is to go into device manager and in the power management tab for this device uncheck the option that allows windows to power it down to save power. I tried that and it didn't help.

Others have suggested downgrading the driver from v11 to v9 or v10, but I don't know where to get v9 or v10 of this driver that is compatible with the surface book. Anyone know if one of the downloads on Intel's site would be compatible?

So, has anyone else noticed this issue and know of a fix?

Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T16:48:49+00:00

    I have to agree. The SB should not lose any charge while completely off. My 2011 MBP doesn't lose any when it's shutdown. I am tired of all the Microsoft apologists saying otherwise.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T16:00:34+00:00

    I just went down to my basement, booted up my 2013 MacAir, which I had fully charged back in October.  When I booted up, 100% battery.  

    Thinking "Maybe it's a PC thing", I then powered up my son's old HP Pavillion. He hasn't used this PC since March.  100% charged at the time. 

    Booted it up.  

    100% since MARCH.

    Next...

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T15:56:22+00:00

    This is crazy. I picked up 1520 off the shelf after 4 MONTHS of being shutdown to find the battery at 50%. Surface Book wouldn't survive a week. I'm guessing is related to the hinge mechanism

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T15:45:19+00:00

    It's perfectly normal for batteries to lose charge even while on the shelf, lonely, not connected to anything. I have an extra battery for my Samsung Galaxy s5 and after sitting in my room for two weeks and powering up the phone with it, it's usually at 95% or so. Now, obviously this SB drain is faster than that, but in a practical sense I'll never have it powered off for a week and then immediately need it to be at >90% charge without access to a charger. Factor in that it takes a little power to start up, then to read the battery properly. My previous Samsung laptop also would power on at about 95% battery after being shut down for a day or two. 

    So, obviously I think there is something in the laptop that is drawing power when it shouldn't be in shut down, but at 5-6% per day it's really not an issue compared to the massive drain in sleep mode, or several of the other glitches reported. Hopefully when they fix the sleep drain it will rectify the shut down drain as well. 

    That being said, there are users that have reported losing 10-20% in the same time period, and that really is a problem, but that seems unit-dependent, and those will be replaced by Microsoft without issue.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T15:44:57+00:00

    Sometime ago when I returned from long holidays, I found that the battery of my car had drained and needed recharging before it could turn the ignition.  According to my car manual - and it is an expensive car - It is normal to have battery drain when the car is not in use. You would need to disconnect the cables from the battery to eliminate drain and there is a procedure for this.  So if this is acceptable for a car, why not for a laptop?  Please stop wining about insignificant things. SB has much more serious problems with blue screens when you undock, dock, hibernate etc.

    I've owned every type of laptop over the last 15+ years.  

    MacBook's, PC's, Chromebooks, etc. 

    I have NEVER once, EVER experienced battery drain from a full powered off state.  Ever.  Your argument doesn't hold water and is not an Apple's to Apple's comparison considering that you are not continually recharging a car battery to a full power state like you are with a laptop or cell phone

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