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New 8204: battery will not last more than 100 minutes...

post #1 of 10
4/2/06 at 2:49pm
Thread Starter 
Hello,

Just got my TM 8204 on Wednesday of last week and am having some power problems with it. Please forgive me if this has come up before, but the search is not working for me on this site.

The battery is worthless. I lose 1% of the battery life every minute or so. The worst part of this is that it doesn't matter if I'm working in Photoshop or have the machine in standby or hibernate mode. It loses battery power at practically the same rate whenever the cord is not plugged in. Is this a known issue? Is my battery defective or are there software issues at play here?

I have unistalled all of the Acer eApps in hopes that it might help, but it doesn't seem to have done any good.

Half the time when I close the cover, the laptop keeps running and throws a "insufficient resources for API" or something like that error.

Overall, I am happy with the machine, but this issue is really tarnishing the quality of an otherwise great laptop.

Looking forward to any hints your folks can offer.
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post #2 of 10
4/2/06 at 3:09pm
Check in taskmanager and see if anything is going at 100% cpu. If it is then that might be the problem.

Since you uninstalled acer power management you will have to install another utility to lower the speed of the cpu when it's not under any load, otherwise it will stay at 2Ghz and eat your battery. I use RMClock for that http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml
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post #3 of 10
4/2/06 at 3:14pm
Thread Starter 
Nope, ever since I uninstalled Gravisense, it hasn't maxed out the CPU.

So, without ePowerManagement, it will continue to run at full throttle even in hibernation? That seems kind of silly. I'll try your link or maybe just reinstall ePM without all the other stuff.

Thanks for the help!
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post #4 of 10
4/2/06 at 3:25pm
Did you by any chance do a clean install of Windows XP? If so you need to apply the registry patch due to the bug in Windows XP with USB devices.

The registry fix is as follows. Also, this won't be valid if you wake you laptop from sleep.
  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. Locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\USB
  4. Note: If the USB subkey does not exist, create it. To do this, follow these steps:
    a. Select the Services key. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
    b. Type USB in the New Key #1 box to name the new key "USB."
  5. Right-click USB, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  6. In the New Value #1 box that appears, type EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then press ENTER.
  7. Right-click EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then click Modify.
  8. In the Value data box, type 1, leave the Hexadecimal option selected, and then click OK.

As for the hibernation problem, this is a known problem with Windows, can read the KB Article 909095. If you do a google search on WindowsXP-KB909095-x86-ENU.exe you can find the hotfix without calling microsoft.
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post #5 of 10
4/2/06 at 3:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Falafel
Did you by any chance do a clean install of Windows XP? If so you need to apply the registry patch due to the bug in Windows XP with USB devices.

The registry fix is as follows. Also, this won't be valid if you wake you laptop from sleep.
Thanks. No I didn't do a fresh install of Windows.

I did do the Hotfix though and reinstalled ePowerManagement. It still shows me losing at least 1% of my battery charge every single minute. This is very frustrating.
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post #6 of 10
4/3/06 at 1:09am
Eh? Your battery goes down even when its hibernated? Thats crazy.
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post #7 of 10
4/3/06 at 5:46am
Thread Starter 
OK, after installing the hotfix and tweaking ePM, it seems to be working. It's not perfect, but it only lost 2% of the battery while standing by overnight. I can live with this.

Thanks for your help.
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post #8 of 10
4/5/06 at 11:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by indiekiduk
Eh? Your battery goes down even when its hibernated? Thats crazy.
I've just discovered that my 8204 does the same thing - if it hibernates overnight, it discharges ALOT! Is this the same WinXP bug that causes a webcam, although not activated, to draw power, which decreases our battery life? Or is this a separate bug?

brightwhite - what did you mean by "installing the hotfix and tweaking ePM?"

edit: OOPS! Saw Falafel's post above now! He mentioned doing this if you do a WinXP clean install - on a stock 8204, would this still apply?
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post #9 of 10
4/6/06 at 2:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Falafel
Did you by any chance do a clean install of Windows XP? If so you need to apply the registry patch due to the bug in Windows XP with USB devices.

The registry fix is as follows. Also, this won't be valid if you wake you laptop from sleep.
  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. Locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\USB
  4. Note: If the USB subkey does not exist, create it. To do this, follow these steps:
    a. Select the Services key. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Key.
    b. Type USB in the New Key #1 box to name the new key "USB."
  5. Right-click USB, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  6. In the New Value #1 box that appears, type EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then press ENTER.
  7. Right-click EnIdleEndpointSupport, and then click Modify.
  8. In the Value data box, type 1, leave the Hexadecimal option selected, and then click OK.

As for the hibernation problem, this is a known problem with Windows, can read the KB Article 909095. If you do a google search on WindowsXP-KB909095-x86-ENU.exe you can find the hotfix without calling microsoft.
Falafel - does this registry patch only apply to users who did a clean Windows install? My 8204 is stock, except for doing the NTFS change.

The "bug in WinXP with USB devices" is a problem I've read about, but haven't seen a solution for - is there one? Is my rapid battery drain, even in hibernation, due to this? I appreciate any help you can give!
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post #10 of 10
4/6/06 at 5:26am
Thread Starter 
Yep, the Hotfix cured it, along with tweaking the settings a bit for the battery in the ePowerManager. I alos uninstalled all fo the Acer eApps except for the Orbicam drivers and the ePowerManager.

I didn't do Falafel's registry fix.
Good luck.
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