Microsoft’s Window’s 7 Battery Power Issue

According to ‘computershopper’ – Windows 7 ‘Battery power issue’ is proving to be a bit of a pain for many users.

There have been reported issues with battery power – such as ‘premature warnings’ stating that the power is either low or exhausted, as well as annoying prompts to replace the battery altogether!

A Microsoft spokeswoman said that the problem was related to the Windows 7 tool that decided when the battery had been drained, or was unable to hold a charge. The issue was being investigated with Microsoft’s hardware partners as the problem could be related to ‘system firmware (BIOS)’ which boots the computer.

There have been numerous complaints (dedicated to Windows 7 battery problems) on Microsoft’s support forum where comments started as early as June last year, (2009) and complaints are still being posted on a daily basis. Some users on the forum have faith in Microsoft’s assurance that their batteries are not impaired, while others feel that window’s 7 has permanently drained their batteries.

For instance – one of the posts on the forum reads –

“In Windows 7 RC and the previous beta, I have been receiving an error message saying “Consider replacing your battery” “There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly”. I know for a fact that the battery is good. It works fine in Vista, its only about 4 months old, it lasts 2 hours +, and even in Windows 7, it will last for the same time period as it did in Vista.

People have been saying (as well as microsoft) that it is the BIOS and it needs to be updated. Well, I did obtain the latest BIOS from LG, which is dated in 2009, and that didn’t change anything. I’m concluding that it is NOT the BIOS since vista reported the estimated time left of the battery just fine, even before the bios update, and I have the latest BIOS. I ran the powercfg -energy command and it says that windows was not able to determine the capacity of the battery, yet if I go and install the LG batery application, it will tell me all the information about the battery. I even went as far as to try my friend’s battery which is less than 3 weeks old, and it still gave the same error messages.

 . . . . and another posted comment reads -

Until yesterday it used to state that I had 7 hours battery life after a full charge; today after a full charge, it states that I have 4 hours left,” said “tigger1962″ of a three-week-old Toshiba Satellite T110. “I’ve only had it on now 15 minutes and my charge has now gone down to 2 hours 24 minutes”.

Numerous computers affected – Battery power complaints from Windows 7 users have reported numerous affected makes and models, including laptops from Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba.