Battery drains fast on new laptop

[Nizwaz553]

Hello All,

I have been having some trouble with my battery on my new laptop (which I got less than 6 months ago). It is an HP Envy 15t touchscreen, and the battery doesn't last for more than about 2 hours. I've tried some basic fixes, like decreasing brightness, but that hasn't really helped. I've also noticed that the fan runs pretty loudly for long periods of time (I just timed it, for example, and it was making loud noises for 15-20 minutes straight). Finally, recently the laptop will freeze for a couple of minutes (it will usually freeze when the fan starts running). 

Like I said, this is a relatively new laptop, and I don't use it all that much (maybe a couple hours of browsing a day, and a few hours of streaming over the course of a week) so I'm not sure why its having this problem. When I first got the laptop, I was getting about 6 hours without charge. Now, for example, it dropped from 100% to 84% in about a 20 minute span.

Any help on the matter would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

Measure, measure, measure.

If the fan is speeding-up, it's because the motherboard has detected "excessive" temperatures, and has increased the fan-speed to try to cool the computer.

What causes those temperatures?  Basically, the CPU is working "hard", and generating extra heat.

Use the Windows "Task Manager" and/or "Process Monitor" to see which tasks are consuming the CPU.

[Nizwaz553]

Thank you for your response. I checked the task manager while the fan was running heavily, and I see that the anti-virus I installed is taking up 40%+ of the CPU. This makes sense, since I have been having this problem after I installed the antivirus, I just hadn't put two and two together. I don't know why its doing that, but at least I know what the problem is now.

Thank you for your help. 

[mdklassen]

> Thank you for your help. 

Welcome to this forum.

The proper way to acknowledge those who help you is to:

1. click the purple/white "thumbs-up" icon below each response, or,

2. click "Accept As Solution" to the response that helped you the most.

P.S. Some anti-virus products do a "first-time-deep-scan", before "settling-down" to be less resource-intensive after that.

Of course, the anti-virus that you chose can be uninstalled, and a different one can be installed, if you think that the built-in "Windows Defender" (in Windows 10) or "Microsoft Security Essentials" (in Windows 7) is not adequate protection.