Incredibly short battery life with new battery

[VirgileC]

Hello,

I have noticed that since around one year the battery life of my laptop started to plummet and got around 4 to 5 hours at idle maximum instead of the 11 hours advertised on HP's website. I decided last month to replace the battery and to my great surprise, this did not change anything at all. I still have around 4 hours and a half of battery life even on idle.

Weirdly enough, the power consumption on battery seems to be caped to a minimum of 9.252 W, even with the brightness to a minimum, power saving mode on, wifi and bluetooth off. With the battery capacity being 43 Wh, some quick math confirms the value of 4 and a half hours that I get.

The power consumption can go up with some more demanding tasks but NEVER goes below exactly 9.252 W. I know this chip is capable of drawing less than that, around 5 W, because in the past I could get between 6 and 8 hours of battery (and also because if we keep in mind the 11 hours of battery life advertised, that gets us an average power consumption of 3.9 W).

I have the latest version of windows, all drivers are up-to-date, the BIOS is also on the latest version.

Thanks for your help

[Garp_senchau]

@VirgileC, Welcome to HP Support Community,

Thank you for posting your query; I’m here to help by guiding you through steps to resolve this issue

Check Power Settings

Go to Control Panel > Power Options and set it to Power Saver.

Set Minimum Processor State to 5% under Advanced Power Settings.

Battery Report

Open Command Prompt (right-click Start > Command Prompt).

Type powercfg /batteryreport and press Enter.

Check the battery report for capacity info.

Task Manager

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.

Look for any programs using too much CPU or memory.

Close unnecessary apps.

Check for Malware

Run a full scan using Windows Defender or another antivirus.

Reset Power Driver

Go to Device Manager > Batteries > Right-click Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery and Uninstall.

Restart your laptop.

Check for Windows Updates

Go to Settings > Windows Update and install any pending updates.

I hope this helps.

Please feel free to reply here if you have any questions or if you need further clarification on any of the steps. 

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[VirgileC]

Hello @Garp_senchau,

Thanks a lot for your help, I changed the settings that you recommended and did the modifications. The battery report indicates a remaining capacity of 42.735 Wh remaining and a cycle count of 4 (since I changed the battery).

However, after running several tests, I still get the same battery life of around 4.5 h, even with varying brightness levels.

Regards,

Virgile

[Garp_senchau]

Hey @VirgileC, 

Thank you for your response

Check Background Apps

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc).

Look for apps using a lot of CPU or memory, and close any unnecessary ones.

Battery Calibration

Fully charge your battery, then let it drain to 0%.

Charge it back to 100%. This helps Windows correctly track the battery's capacity.

Check for Correct GPU Use

If your laptop has both integrated and discrete graphics, make sure it's using the integrated GPU for battery saving.

You can do this through the NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Settings.

Reinstall Battery and Chipset Drivers

Go to Device Manager, find your battery and chipset drivers, and reinstall them or roll them back to an earlier version.

Check Power Plan Settings

Go to Control Panel > Power Options and set it to Power Saver.

Under Advanced Power Settings, set Minimum processor state to 5% and Maximum processor state to 100%.

Update BIOS

Even though you have the latest BIOS, check HP's support site for any power-related updates.

I hope this helps.

Please feel free to reply here if you have any questions or if you need further clarification on any of the steps. 

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[VirgileC]

Hello again,

For the background apps, none are behaving out of the ordinary, the CPU utilization sits around 5 and 10% while using my browser to write this answer.

For the battery calibration, this is one of the first things that I did after installing the new battery, and I have done it again around 2 weeks ago, without much change.

For the GPU use, my laptop only has integrated GPU (AMD Ryzen 5 5625U with Radeon Graphics) so this is quickly answered.

For the battery and chipset, I did this and they re-installed themselves after rebooting without any change.

For the power plan settings I already did this thanks to your previous answer, no change again.

For the BIOS, I checked on HP's website and only one version of the BIOS (the latest) is available, and no note about some power issues.

I doubt that any other modification on Windows could solve the issue, and after some research online, a probable explanation is that a recent BIOS update removed a power managment setting that is now locked on a mode that forces the battery to drain at a minimum of 9.2 Watts.

If this is the case, the only solution is to pray that HP is willing to either give us access to the previous BIOS version that had the setting (which is not possible because downgrading the BIOS is prevented, and forcing it is out of my competences), or that they fix it in a new update by a way or another.

Thank you anyway for your help and have a good day.

Regards,

Virgile

[Garp_senchau]

Hey @VirgileC,

Thank you so much for the detailed explanation.

I really appreciate you taking the time to run through all those troubleshooting steps and providing such a clear picture of the issue.

Given the potential link between the recent BIOS update and the power management behavior, I can understand your concern. If you’re open to it, one possible step to try would be a BIOS recovery. It may help to restore the previous settings or reset to factory defaults, which could potentially address the issue you're seeing with battery drain.

You may refer to this guide: HP Notebook PCs - Recovering the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) | HP® Support

I hope this helps.

Please feel free to reply here if you have any questions or if you need further clarification on any of the steps. 

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[VirgileC]

Hello again,
Thank you for taking an interest in my issue. Even if we don’t find a solution, I really appreciate your effort to help.

I tried to follow the guide that you shared to restore the previous version of the BIOS. I selected a version that approximately corresponds to when my battery was behaving correctly and created a USB recovery drive with the HP tool. However, when booting my PC into recovery mode with Win+B, I get the error message in the a photo bellow :

Regards,

Virgile

[Garp_senchau · Accepted solution]

Hey @VirgileC,

Thank you for your response

It seems that downgrading the BIOS isn’t possible, as it’s asking for the latest version. Did you make sure to download the BIOS file from the official HP website?

While it’s generally not recommended to downgrade the BIOS, I understand you were hoping for better performance with the previous version. But at this point, it’s best to stick with the latest BIOS.

Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any other viable solutions to improve the battery life at this time.

You might want to refer to this guide and article for additional steps to check and potentially enhance battery performance.

Reference:

HP Notebook PCs and Chromebooks - Improving battery performance | HP® Support

Maximising Laptop Battery Life: Tips and Tricks | HP® Tech Takes < Tech Takes - HP.com India

I hope this helps.

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[VirgileC]

Hello,

Yes, I downloaded the file from the official HP downloads website.

I think too that there seems to be no solution for this, at least that I can do by myself. It is quite sad that a nice little machine like this PC becomes a pain to use just because of one problem 😞

Anyways, thanks a lot for your help, have a nice day.

Regards,

Virgile

[Garp_senchau]

Hey @VirgileC,

Thank you for your patience and for working with me to troubleshoot this issue.

Unfortunately, it seems there are no further steps we can take. If needed, you can reach out to our phone/chat support or visit an HP service center for additional assistance.

Regards,