The laptop battery is downloaded very quickly – what to do?

If your laptop battery drains rapidly, the causes of this issue can vary, ranging from normal wear and tear to hardware or software problems. This article explores why your laptop battery depletes so quickly, helps identify the underlying reasons for the problem, and provides tips on how to extend its lifespan whenever possible.

Battery wear

The first thing, which must be done to restore the autonomy of the battery life: check the degree of wear of the laptop battery. This is current not only for old devices, but also for those recently purchased: for example, the «zero» frequency unloading can cause a much faster degradation of the battery.

There are several methods for carrying out this check, including the incorporated tool in Windows 10 and 8 to create the laptop battery ratio. I recommend the Aida64 program: it takes place on any hardware equipment and offers all the necessary information also in the evaluation version (the program is not free).

You can download Aida64 for free from the official website (if you do not want to install the program, download from there in zip format and extract only the content, then start aida64.exe from the extracted file).

In the program, in the «Computer» route – «Energy Management» you can see the main problematic points: the capacity and capacity foreseen for the complete load (that is, initial and current, due to wear) and another «level of use» section with what the complete current capacity is lower than that designed.

On the basis of these data, we can see if the battery wear is the cause of the exhaust.

For example, in my case on an inspiron 555 laptop, work autonomy is 6 hours. Suddenly we decrease 20 percent because the manufacturer offers data for specially created conditions and therefore for 4.8 hours we decrease another 5 percent (battery level), remains 4.56 hours.

If the work autonomy of the laptop from the battery corresponds to this figure during the use of «Pacific» (browser, documents), then we should not look for other reasons, apart from the wear and tear of the battery. Everything is fine and the functioning autonomy corresponds to the state of the current battery.

Driver for electricity management

The second cause for the small autonomy of the laptop: lack of official drivers for hardware equipment and energy management. This is particularly true for users who install or reinstall Windows and after using driverpack to install drivers or even do not install drivers, because «and everything works».

The components of the laptops differ from the «standard» version of the same equipment and can work incorrectly without the chipset drivers, Acti (do not confuse with Ahci) and sometimes additional utilities, which are offered by the manufacturer. Therefore, if no driver has been installed and rely on the message from Device Manager (Management of Devices), which says that the driver does not require updates, it is a wrong approach.

The correct steps are as follows:

1. Access the official website of the laptop manufacturer and in the «support» section is looking for drivers for your laptop model.
2. Download and manually install the hardware drivers, in particular for the chipset, the usefulness to communicate with UEFI, if necessary, ACPI drivers. Even if the available drivers will be only for the previous version of the operating system (for example, you have installed Windows 10 and are only available for Windows 7), Useals, perhaps they will have to perform them in compatibility mode.
3. Read the description of the Bios updates for the laptop model – if among these are those, which eliminate any problem relating to the administration of supplies or battery unloading, you can install them.

Examples for these drivers (for your laptop they can be others, but after these examples you can understand it, what you need):

• Advanced configuration and power management interface (ACPI) SI Intel (AMD) chipset driver – Pentru Lenovo.
• HP Power Manager Utility Software, HP Software Framework SI HP Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Support Environment Pentru Laptopuri HP.
• Epower management application, as well as Intel chipset and management engine – for Acer.
• ATKACPI Driver and Utility related to the SAU ATKPACKAGE PIETRU ASUS Take-Hotel Sau.
• Intel Inter Management Engine Interface (ME) and Driver of Intel Chipset – for Intel processors.

You may also be interested: where I can download a laptop driver.

Programs with impact on the battery power of the laptop

Energy in one way or another is consumed by all programs running on the computer. However, the most common reason for the fact that the laptop is downloaded too quickly are the author’s programs, which use the resources of the hard disk and the processor (torrent customers, «automatic cleaning», antivirus and others) or malware programs.

And if we do not have to reach the antivirus, we should think, if we have to keep customers and utilities torrent in the author, as well as checking the computer for the presence of malware.

Further information on these problems can be viewed in the article: how to get rid of the applications starting with Windows.

Dust and overheating the laptop

Another important moment, which can affect the battery supply: the dust in the housing and overheating of the laptop.

If you always hear the strong rotation of the laptop cooling system (it was not felt when the laptop was new), think about how it could be remedied, because even the coldest high -speed rotation increases energy consumption.

I would recommend resorting to a specialized service to clean the dust laptop. If you want to clean yourself, you can read the article: how to clean a dust laptop (the method is not for professionals and it is not the most efficient).

More information

And another information on the laptop battery, which could be useful:

• In Windows 10 in «Settings» – «System» – «Battery» it is possible to activate the saving of the battery.
• In recent versions of Windows it is possible to manually set the power supply scheme and energy saving options for different devices.
• If you are passionate about modern games or work with «heavy» programs, the quick battery unloading is normal and the battery life by a single charge is reduced several times compared to the one declared.
• Rest and lethargy, in addition to stopping the laptop with the «Fast Start» active module in Windows 10 and 8, also have a negative impact on the battery.
• If you have the possibility, don’t let the battery completely download. I upload it every time you have the possibility. For example, the loading level is 70% and you have the possibility to recharge. This will extend the duration of the Li-ion or Li-Pol battery (even if your friend «who is good» supports the opposite).

That’s all. I hope that some of the suggestions will help you prolong the battery life and work independently from a single charge.