Incredible battery drain during connected standby on a clovertrail windows 8 tablet

Anonymous

I'm experiencing infuriating battery drain during "connected standby" on a windows 8 tablet, Samsung Smart PC 500T. I bought it 2.5 months ago, the problem has been on for over a month, after some big OS updates from MS... I've tried to diagnose it any way I can, but this it it, thank you, not interested in this all connected standby thing, don't want to be a guinea pig anymore. I just want to disable it.

So - how to disable connected standby? Don't tell me "it's a part of windows experience" bla bla, the 'experience' is half baked so far...(to put it very diplomatically). I want to shut connected standby down, completely - and use good, old, normal windows 7-style sleep. Is there a service, registry key, anything i can do to disable connected standby?

On connected standby, I've got battery drain with airplane mode, no user apps open (anything that can be shutdown - shutted down), most metro apps deleted, just 4 left (metro IE10, Windows Store, Music, Photos, S-Camera), no nfc, no bluetooth, no usb accesories, no keyboard dock, all task scheduler stuff not only not allowed to wake the computer, but disabled at all, no auto syncing anything in widndows 8 (not syncing tiles, user account stuff, no push mail in outlook 2013), no auto updates to OS, anything (except for samsung own s-update service - it's fine, it's been long before and it didn't cause problems), no anytvirus, windows defender disabled..

Nothing interesting in the event viewer, with anything power-related filtered from the system logs..

I mean, man... What the ....?! How to find this something that drains my battery? I've been looking at cpu cycles (task manager and ProcessExplorer), and it's not conclusive, the most cycles is OS stuff.. some "hardware interrupts and DMCs", but not nearly enough to cause such drain...

I'm suspecting wifi drivers a little bit.. some weird logs I've seen in the even viewer.. But I'm going into connected standby <on airplane mode>. Wifi off. I even checked, I disabled the wifi driver in the device manager and still, battery drain on the connected standby

Yes, I'm all over updated. I'd even say updated too much from MS... This been working fine before.

Some powercfg -batteryreport (s) in the links below. Yup, played with powercfg /waketimers, device manager power and wake settings, powercfg /devicequery wake_armed (all turned off, nothing here from a loong time) and powercfg -requests. Clean.

On these pictures from powercfg -batteryreport, the columns are date/type of activity/lasted for how long/battery drain in %/battery drain in mWH. Suggesting you have a look at the last one. It's a record there... 18% battery drain in 4 hours. "Sleeping".

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4203&authkey=!AGOahveLemD-xPs

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4202&authkey=!AAKbhNhOulPIJC0

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4201&authkey=!ABIvfMzCdX_dGOY

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4200&authkey=!AGqKhL79akGQZDg

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4199&authkey=!ABwMBny0RuCTFnM

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4232&authkey=!AEVUq9rlcLGg_4Q

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A6A0144117F1D94!4231&authkey=!AGAoUOoE7n091iE

The tablet is lying on my desk, just sitting there, doing I've got no idea what, and 4 hours later boom, where all that battery juice went for?! I've got problem with the windows home button, it gets triggered in my bag accidentaly when I carry the tablet around, but it's a separate problem how to disable this windows home button. The connected standby battery drain is a different thing.

Much worse.

So:

QUESTION 1:

how to disable this crappy connected standby thing that drains my battery and drives me nuts?

QUESTION 2:

if it's not possible to disable directly, how to go around that? I don't need a button to do this. Telling what to do with windows registry is good enough.

QUESTION 3:

if connected standby cannot be disabled in any way - how to diagnose which app/process uses cpu cycles, battery juice? I've been all over ProcessExplorer and Event Viewer, but maybe you know something I don't know...

And please spare me suggestions of clean boot, when I revert to "normal" state I'll have a ton of bloatware I don't need running with the OS.. there is a reason why a little bit tech-savvy people use such things as services.msc. De-bloating! Nope, I didn't touch the system services.. Yes I know it can cause a ton of problems, it's not this.

I don't need a clean boot, I need a way which device in the device manager uses so much power, what driver, what app, what service, what process, what thread, where it's located in the filesystem, at which times it's been active, how much cycles on the CPU it got since then...

And if MS doesn't already have such app in windows, there should be one, cause power issues on the clovertrail windows 8 tablets are ..... plague. For instance - this is exactly the problem (a review of similar win 8 tablet with the same connected standby issue) here - http://www.umpcportal.com/2013/02/connected-standby-battery-life-problem/

When even bloggers and tech reviews write about it, you know there's something in it.

But I guess stupid finger painting apps like freshpaint are more important as a selling point.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Just to let you all know that I have found the registry key to turn off connected standby. So you can all stop raging and take a sigh of relief.

Go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power. There is a DWORD called "CsEnabled" which you should find set to 1 and changing it to 0 will turn connected standby off.

I have a Surface Pro 3 and can confirm that since making the change my battery life has dramatically improved. Also on the battery meter, previously it just showed the percentage remaining but now it shows the time remaining (e.g 8Hrs, 30 mins) as well.

The only disadvantage of doing this is when I close the type cover and re-open it, the surface logo (normally blue windows logo) appears and performs the old style wake up from sleep. Obviously this should not be a problem for any of you though although as most laptops normally do this..

Previously when I opened the cover, the screen would come back on and I would be back at my desktop (or metro app, whatever was last open) just as before - similar to pressing the lock button on and off on an iPad, tablet or phone.

I hope that this helps everyone all out. Please like and mark as solution if this fixes your problem :D

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

I would suggest you update the bios. There's been two recent releases of bios from Samsung for ativ 500t1c. The first wrecked my battery meter and didn't fix connected standby battery drain, the other fixed the battery metter and the drain. After a year from the release of the device. Finally... And it was crappy bios drivers all along...

0 comments

50 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-06-26T21:27:16+00:00

Wow! So Connected Standby CANNOT be disabled. Been searching for resolutions the past two days. That bursted my bubble. Using a Surface RT, and while I can't say for sure Connected Standby is excessively draining my battery, based on my usage pattern with the device, it is certainly causing a headache and preventing me from using the device as often as I would like.

Unlike my Windows Phone, which also uses Connected Standby (AOAC), I don't use my Surface RT every single day. I am a busy person, and lots of what I do at the office and at home require the power of a robust desktop PC with a big screen. When I do have some "me" time, I will pull the Surface RT out of my bag, often to discover that the battery is dead or near dead. So I put it on charge and the next morning I put it back in my bag. If I am lucky I will get to use it before it runs out of juice again.

My Surface RT typically lasts about 2.5 to 3.5 days without any use on a full charge. So I MUST use it every 2-2.5 days. Otherwise it's out of juice. And I refuse to use a tablet tethered to a power cord. There is just something total wrong with that. Sure, if I disable ALL of the background apps I will get a little more battery life. But then, when I do turn my Surface RT on, those tiles won't update unless I actually open the apps. So the background tasks MUST remain on in order to gain the benefits that the Windows 8 Start Screen offers.

Personally, what I don't need is for those apps to update in the background while my Surface RT is in my bag. That's why I have an always on Windows Phone. Now I get stereo chimes each time I receive a push email or other notification That's silly, and it's a waste of energy. I am sure there are plenty of users who take full advantage of Connected Standby. And probably charge their Connected Standby tablet devices every night, just as they do their smartphone. But my phone has an option to turn WiFi off when it goes to sleep. Why can't an Connect Standby device have a similar option.

Turning on Airplane Mode each time I put my Surface RT to sleep is at minimum a three tap solution. Thanks to some folks smarter than me, I now have a Start Screen tile which opens the Network flyout directly, so I am down to two taps. With their help, I hope to have a pair of batch file shortcuts to toggle Airplane Mode on/off with a single tap. But turning off Connected Standby in Settings would be a whole lot easier.

Come one Microsoft. Did you really think this through. This reminds me of when I got a computer with a whopping 20MB hard drive. Suddenly Windows, and every other program, got all boated to use up the majority of that space. Just because there are processors that will give you 8-10 hours of uptime today vs. 3-4, doesn't mean you can just **** all that extra power away. Slider option please.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-06-19T04:30:32+00:00

A common thread to the Windows 8 battery drain during sleep issue seems to be the Samsung Ativ 500t. I've contacted their live tech support, who said they weren't aware of any known issue and weren't able to help, and been searching and trying to troubleshoot. I haven't been able to pin it down to any one device or program.

It's kind of spoiling the enjoyment of the new laptop, all day battery life isn't much good if I'm down by half before I even wake it up.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-05-17T19:05:34+00:00

According to MS people, connected standby cannot be disabled. I'd personally also prefer good old Win7-style sleep mode... I wonder if installing Win7 would be possible and whether the drivers would all work... and whether the battery life would drop :p

This has all been asked before, btw.: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_8-performance/windows-8-connected-standby-is-incredibly/adad208c-8c91-42b7-a9d8-bbcf3acad1d1

There's no satisfactory answer to be had, it seems. :(

There's a windows 8-only service called Time Broker that governs the operation of metro apps during connected standby. By disabling this service on desktop PCs, people confirm that metro UI stops working (it's kind of crippled when the computer is awake and definitely off when the computer sleeps). From googling and forum posts I know this service can be disabled on desktop PCs, I just can't disable it on my tablet.

It's just MS people that don't know how to do this. Probably spent too much time training "thank you for being our customer" mantra.

Again - it can be done on desktops. I just can't force this on my tablet.

As you're experiencing the same issues with power drain during connected standby - here's the links to the topic that largely helped me since yesterday (power logs look much better now, still not perfect though):

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/samsung/56487-lost-40-overnight-sleep-mode-normal.html#post324003

Also there's a guy here that did the same and it helped him too to a large (but uncomplete) extent - http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/samsung/56856-connected-standby-battery-drain-ativ-500t.html#post326789

So basically - older Intel DPTF drivers and the Lenovo Wifi driver instead of broadcomm's (quite a lot of people complain at broadcomm wireless and bluetooth drivers on smart pc 500T, looking at samsung support pages).

And btw, the topic you're referencing ( http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_8-performance/windows-8-connected-standby-is-incredibly/adad208c-8c91-42b7-a9d8-bbcf3acad1d1 ) - oh I know it all too well..

I sometimes pop into tabletpcreview forums (THE best forum on tablets, humbily admitting it), actually just been there yesterday and found a ton of useful tips that - I think - largely improved the state of my problems with connected standby. Actually since I've found a lot more skilled and helpful community there, I'm ditching ms answers...
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments