HP ENVY x360 15-ew1073cl: Battery draining even after shutdown

[BobRTR]

I took delivery of this laptop (from Costco) 13 days ago. On the second day I noticed the battery wasn't at 100% after shutdown over night. I've spent days with HP help and internet searches. HP wants me to send it back to them, but I've made a major discovery: the battery discharge after shutdown only happens with a wireless mouse connected. It goes from 100% to 86% in 22 hours. I've seen other people posting on this site with the same issue, but nobody at HP seems to realize there's a problem. I don't want to unplug the mouse dongle every night (HP brand). Already the outer case has come lose from the guts. Any ideas? Tonight I'm testing it with a Logitech mouse connected, but I doubt it'll make a difference.

My otherwise loathsome 10-year-old Dell laptop keeps the battery at 100% for months, with mouse connected, in shutdown.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

A couple of things you may want to experiment with:

First of all, on these new notebooks, the main internal battery also serves as the CMOS/RTC battery which maintains the system clock and BIOS settings.  So the battery will never remain at 100% with the A/C adapter unplugged.

Most likely your 10-year-old Dell notebook has a separate CMOS/RTC battery to maintain those settings.

Then there is the fast startup setting in the Windows power settings app.

When fast startup is enabled (which it is by default), the notebook does not actually completely shut down, so it uses battery power to maintain the hibernation-like settings.

This allows the PC to start up a bit faster than if it was completely shut down.

You can uncheck that option to fully shut down the notebook at all times.

Last...your notebook has a USB port and USB-C port which support HP sleep and charge.

I'm wondering if that drains the battery if you have something plugged into the USB sleep and charge port.

See if plugging your mouse dongle into the other USB port labeled as item #1 in chapter 2, page 6 of the service manual.

Chapter 2 pages 4 & 5 of the service manual shows the location of the USB sleep and charge port.

Maintenance and Service Guide (hp.com)

[BobRTR]

I've been using what the Maintenance and Service Guide call #5 (right side), "USB SuperSpeed 10 GBPS port with HP Sleep and Charge." It further says, "Connects a USB device, provides high-speed data transfer, and charges small devices (such as a smartphone), even when the computer is off." I'll try #1, left side, tomorrow. Each such test takes a day--hard to make progress! I'll also look into fast startup, but I thought I'd seen it only affected startup from sleep mode, not shutdown. Thanks for the tips!

PS: I remember back in the DOS/80486 days there was a button battery that kept the BIOS working. Ah, the bad-old days!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Here's how to turn off fast startup in Windows if you don't know where the setting is.

How to enable or disable fast startup on Windows 11 | Windows Central

[BobRTR]

This morning, after 21 hours being shut down and with the mouse dongle plugged into the port on the left (which isn't powered after shutdown), the battery was still at 100%. So your suggestion solved the problem! I wish the HP help people were as good. They immediately go into full crazy mode and want to update BIOS, Windows, Drivers, run battery checks and calibrations, etc. Once I'd identified the mouse as the problem they should have recognized the fix.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is great news that all you needed to do was to plug the USB dongle into the non-powered USB port, thus saving wear and tear on the port by not having to remove and replace the dongle every day.

Glad to have been of assistance.