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

Anonymous
2013-05-13T06:35:35+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2014-10-03T16:26:03+00:00

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

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Anonymous
2013-11-27T12:46:41+00:00

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...

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-16T17:57:57+00:00

    Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet users are experiencing the exact same battery drain issue while in Connected Standby. Dell admits in their User Manual that loss of a wireless connection can cause the drain and that is what I am experiencing. 

    For any Microsoft employees monitoring this thread -- FIX THIS ABSOLUTELY S-T-U-P-I-D SITUATION (!!!) There is no reason for a mobile device to go into a tailspin when it can't locate a valid wireless connection. In fact, it is that very situation where the power management subsystem should attempt to CONSERVE battery life. The situation that MOST Win8.1 users will encounter is "walking out the door with tablet in hand and being away from a WiFi signal for EXTENDED amounts of time".

    I should not have to jump through hoops and "try this" or "try that" to work around someone's idiotic algorithm to stay connected 24/7. Like most people, I sleep about 8 hours a day but my Windows 8.1 tablet (with all the current updates and bios images installed) is sitting there sucking precious battery life at about 4%/10hrs.

    Do not be condescending to all the technically savvy posters and suggest checking this or checking that -- JUST FIX THE PROBLEM. You know what the problem is and there are a dozen different solutions that you can implement. Pick one and post an update. I have 35 years of experience in the computer industry -- both software and hardware -- and can spot attempts to evade and avoid a problem.

    While we have all "inherited" Win8.1 from our respective OEM vendors, it is Microsoft that bears the lion's share of responsibility. Don't do what is politically correct within your organization -- do what is right for your customers. If you wonder why Windows 8/8.1 is not the preferred OS on mobile devices, it is because of situations like this. Don't eat your own dog food and admit that there are (serious) problems that need to be addressed ASAP.

    I would love to be able to use my DV8P like an iPad, but losing 10-20% of the battery per day prevents that. Until Microsoft works with the plethora of vendors to correct this situaiton, you will never acquire a respectable market share in the mobile/tablet arena. I bought the DV8P for myself because I know Windows and wanted to play around with that experience -- I bought iPad minis for the rest of my family because they just work.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-27T13:16:56+00:00

    Now that you mention it, I haven't had any issues in the last few days (i.e. since the last BIOS update)... you've made me cautiously optimistic that this may be permanent ;)

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-06T09:19:46+00:00

    Small followup: The update to Windows 8.1 has slightly improved my device's standby battery life. Instead of the entirely unpredictable behavior from before (some nights ~5% drain and other nights a completely dead tablet in the morning), the device now drains a steady ~20% per day. Still pretty crappy, but at least I roughly know when I need to charge now.

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