problems with Battery Care function

[huey_placard]

The HP Battery Care function in BIOS is not behaving as I expected.   Laptop is new.  I'd prefer to not update the BIOS version if I can avoid it (plus there doesn't appear to be a later version).   (the laptop is new, but is a fairly mature design, thus I'd hope a BIOS update isn't needed)  

Since I've adopted a plan of being plugged in nearly 100% of the time, I've changed the Battery Care setting in BIOS to 50%, so that I could not worry about unplugging the laptop between uses.    

At first, while I was using laptop, it was behaving as I expected.  It would charge when the level fell some amount below 50%, and would stop charging when it reached 50%.     

But two problems since then.   Issue 1:   With the laptop at 50% last night I put it into Sleep mode, and went ahead and left the laptop plugged in overnight, expecting it to still be at 50% charge this morning.   But instead it was fully charged at 100%.    

Issue 2:   This morning I used laptop unplugged for a while until the charge went down to 90%.   Then I plugged in the charger, and it proceeded to charge to 100% again, and it is still showing as charging now.  I've confirmed the BIOS battery care feature is still set to 50%.   

Regarding Issue 1, is the battery care feature only expected to work while the laptop is actually up and running?   What about during sleep or when laptop is turned off completely, isn't the battery care feature still expected to work?   (otherwise that would kind of stink, because I just want to leave it plugged in and not have to worry about it).

Regarding Issue 2, I have no idea what is happening.  Why is it now charging to 100% during use ? Thanks for any guidance.  

[The_Fossette · Accepted solution]

@huey_placard,

Welcome to the HP Support Community!

I reviewed your post and I understand that the battery care function is not working correctly when the computer is in the sleep mode.

Don’t worry, I assure you I will try my best to get this sorted.

I recommend you follow the below steps and check if it helps.

Here is how it is done.

Press ‘Win + I’ shortcut keys to open Windows Settings app.

Click on ‘Update & Security’, then go to the ‘Troubleshoot’ section from the left-side menu.

Scroll downwards a bit and click on the ‘Power’ option.

Click on ‘Run the Troubleshooter’. It will start detecting the problems and if it founds, go ahead fixing it.

If you continue facing the issue, then follow the below steps.

On your keyboard, press ‘Windows key + R’ and type ‘Powercfg.cpl’ in it.

Hit the ‘Enter’ key to open power options in the control panel.

From the left-hand side, click on ‘Choose what the power buttons do’.

Then, click on the link ‘Change settings that are currently unavailable’.

From the bottom given power button options, uncheck the ‘Turn on fast startup’ option.

Click on ‘Save changes’ button.

Let me know how it goes and you have a great day!

If you wish to show appreciation for my efforts, mark my post as Accept as Solution. Your feedback counts!

Cheers!

[huey_placard]

@The_Fossette,

Thanks for the reply!   I will plan to give that a try, but before I do could you let me know if the following changes your suggestion at all?  When I set it to 80% instead of 50%, it seems to be working correctly.  When I again try 50%, it doesn't work correctly (and this time it sent to full charge even when not sleeping).  So I'm glad at least the 80% setting seems to work, even though 50% is what I actually want to use.  Is there any chance that your suggestion could break the 80% feature (cause the 80% setting to stop working) ?

Here's the longer description...     While having this problem, I had been trying the 50% setting for the Battery Care Function in the BIOS settings, and initially it seemed like the main problem was during sleep mode.  When I hadn't yet heard any feedback on this forum, I decided to try the 80% setting instead.   There the feature seemed to have been working correctly.  So then I tried 50% again, and again it did Not work correctly, and this time it would go to full charge even while I was using the computer (not just during sleep).  And now I've again tried the 80% setting and it seems to be working properly.  Does any of this alter your recommendations of what to try?    I don't want to inadvertently break the 80% feature, but at the same time, I really would like to get this working at 50% for longest battery health.  

[The_Fossette]

@huey_placard,

You can go ahead and follow the suggested steps and they will not affect the battery care settings in the BIOS.

Let me know how it goes.

If you wish to show appreciation for my efforts, mark my post as Accept as Solution. Your feedback counts!

Cheers!

[huey_placard]

@The_Fossett, I just wanted to update you that I'm still testing.   Stay tuned.   Below is more info if you have time...

I was just about to post that the suggested solutions didn't work.  The first part of the solution (using the troubleshooting tool) didn't help.  it just went in and adjusted the screen brightness and the screen timeout time.   After doing the second part of the solution (turning off the fast startup option), at first it didn't seem to help either.   I had let the pc drain down to 53% before plugging it back in, just to see how it would respond.  It began charging and was climbing, and I was about to post that it's not working.  But now I notice that it has leveled off at 66% for some reason.  And I haven't tested it in sleep mode overnight, to see how it responds.  So I'll keep you posted.  Also, it still seems strange that the battery care function seemed to be working fine on the 80% setting, even before making these updates.  If there was something related to startup affecting this battery care function, then why wouldn't it also have affected the 80% setting?  

Unrelated to this thread, and I might do a separate thread on this, but in the process running the battery down I had ran a GPU benchmarking program (called Superposition, by Unigine), and I noticed that the GPU FPS performance dropped by approximately 80% while on battery.  I can't remember if I had ever run this benchmark on battery before making your suggested updates.  Is it possible the updates could have affected this?  I've since gone in and tried some different settings in the Nvidia control panel etc and it hasn't made much difference.  Note that this model is fixed to the GTX 1660 ti (there is no Optimus).    I'm generally not overly concerned about GPU performance while on battery, and in fact I was upset to learn that my model isn't capable of enabling the iGPU.   But....I would like to at least have the option to temporarily run with decent GPU performance on battery, just in case ever needed for some particular situation.  I notice the following thread that seems to be related, but I haven't yet tried those solutions.  I'm not a big fan of monkeying around with all of these things just to work out the "as-shipped" bugs.   Do you think the solutions in this thread below would apply to my model as well? 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gaming-Notebooks/Performance-issues-while-unplugged/td-p/6929507

[huey_placard]

@The_Fossett,  it's been hanging around 65%, even after sitting in sleep mode for several hours plugged in.  So I'm going to go ahead and mark this as solved.  I'm not sure why it is at 65% instead of 50%, but I'll give it more time.   I actually prefer 65% over 50% and 80%, but I assume over more time it will eventually settle in at 50%.    I'll start a separate thread regarding my question about GPU performance during battery operation.  Thanks for your help.  

[huey_placard]

@The_Fossett,

It seems I spoke to soon and the issue isn't resolved.  Last night it charged up to 91% for some reason while in sleep mode.  Any idea why?  And now that I've been using it for a while this morning, it is staying at 91% as opposed to depleting itself down to 50% before starting to charge again.  Prior to this the feature seemed to have worked fairly well for several days, keeping the charge in the range of ~ 46% to 54%.  

By the way, is the battery care function expected to work even when the laptop is shut down completely and connected to charger (as opposed to just being in sleep mode)?  

[The_Fossette]

@huey_placard

I recommend you contact support and they will assist you in this regard.

Here is how you can get in touch with support.

1)Click on this link – www.hp.com/contacthp/

2)Select the product type.

3)Enter the serial number of your device or select let HP detect your product option.

4)Select the country from the drop-down.

5)You should see the HP phone support number or Chat option listed.

Cheers!