Laptop hibernation causes future shutdown or hibernate to drain battery

[simonmarshall]

Fault:
The laptop battery loses charge at a rate of <1% per day of shutdown before the first laptop hibernation, which is fine.
However, after the first laptop hibernation, the laptop battery loses charge at a rate of ~10% per day during all subsequent shutdown or hibernation periods, which is terrible.
Obviously excessive discharging is only apparent when not on mains power.
Obviously discharging the equivalent capacity of a smartphone battery while shutdown is a fault not a feature.

Background:
Last year, I bought an HP Pavilion x360 14-dh0525sa. Fairly quickly, I noticed that the battery drained at a rate of ~10% per day while shutdown or hibernated. After a few weeks of fruitless investigation, I took it back to the shop and it was replaced. However, I soon noticed the fault remained. I contacted HP helpdesk and ensured software, drivers and the BIOS were updated, but without solving the fault. HP helpdesk stated they were able to reproduce the fault with their own laptop and eventually offered to have the laptop returned to HP. I returned the laptop to HP, and the battery was replaced. The fault quickly resurfaced. I returned the laptop to HP again, and the motherboard was replaced. The fault resurfaced again, but I noted what I thought was the trigger (I guessed hibernation) and what I could do to reset the laptop (I guessed temporarily remove the battery, since that's what will have happened on battery and motherboard replacement).

Testing:
So, I reset the laptop to restore to factory settings, kept it off wifi to ensure software was kept constant during my testing, and tested the effects of individual actions every day. Each day I would do one thing to sleep, hibernate or shutdown the laptop, but then immediately ensure the laptop was shutdown for 24 hours and record the effect on the battery, ie, I would:

1. start the laptop
2. record the battery charge level fall since the previous day
3. if the battery charge had fallen ~10% (rather than <1%) then I would:
   • shutdown the laptop and temporarily remove the battery for a few minutes
4. otherwise I would:
   • perform action X
   • immediately restart the laptop as necessary (ie, if action X did not shutdown the laptop) and "shutdown /s /t 0"
5. leave the laptop for 24 hours in the shutdown state

Where action X was one of:

• lid action of nothing and close the lid
• lid action of sleep and close the lid
• lid action of hibernate and close the lid
• lid action of shutdown and close the lid
• sleep after 1 minute of inactivity (via power options)
• hibernate after 2 minutes inactivity (via power options)
• start menu > sleep
• start menu > hibernate
• start menu > shutdown
• powershell "shutdown /s /t 0"
• powershell "shutdown /h"

Notes:

• even when the test action was to sleep or hibernate, the laptop was immediately rebooted and shutdown, so that it never stayed in sleep or hibernation longer than a few seconds.
• an action of "hibernate after 2 minutes inactivity" means first sleep after inactivity then hibernate after inactivity. The feature doesn't work properly: it sleeps correctly, leaving the power button flashing off/on to indicate sleep, but when hibernation is supposed to occur the power button changes to non-flashing on while the laptop remains in sleep. It does, however, trigger the underlying fault. Even though the laptop doesn't appear to hibernate properly, it leaves the laptop in a battery drain state.
• I have now also reconnected to wifi, performed a complete update of Windows and drivers, and repeated some of these tests with the same results.

Results:

• I can confirm that as soon as the laptop is first hibernated, even briefly, it will drain the battery at a rate of ~10% per day during any subsequent shutdown or hibernation. (Possibly it also increases the drain on the battery while it is running, but I have no real way of testing that since it will be a small effect compared to the normal drain while running.)
• I can confirm that the fault is only triggered by hibernation, and not by sleep or shutdown.
• I can confirm that the fault is triggered by any event leading to hibernation, ie, a lid action, an auto-hibernate, start menu or command line.
• I can confirm that the fault can be reversed by temporarily removing the battery.

Guesses:

• It is not a specific hardware fault, since I'm on my 2nd laptop, 3rd battery and 3rd motherboard (and I was told it was reproducible by HP too).
• It is not a Windows fault, since it is not a general problem I have observed with any other model laptop.
• It is triggered by software, eg, an HP-specific driver, and not a hardware or design fault, since hibernation and shutdown are the same from an OS perspective (the only difference between them is what Windows arranges to do on reboot).

So, please can HP fix this hibernation fault?

(Strictly speaking I found 2 hibernation faults: the hibernate-battery-drain-state fault I was investigating and the hibernate-on-inactivity-failure fault I found while investigating.)

[Echo_Lake]

@simonmarshall
Thank you for posting on the HP Support Community. 

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help, however, to provide an accurate resolution, I need a few more details:

• Did this happen after a recent window or software update?
• Did you try another charger?
• Does the notebook shut down immediately (right after you unplug the charger)?
• Do you get any error message on your notebook (Such as Plugged in, not charging, etc.)?

While you respond to that, let's try these steps:

Hard Reset: Follow steps from the link: https://hp.care/2GnkMa8. (do not skip any troubleshooting steps even if you feel steps are repeating)

BIOS default: 

1. Turn off the computer and wait five seconds.
2. Press the Power button to start the computer and repeatedly press the F10 key to enter the BIOS setup menu.
3. On the BIOS Setup screen, press F9 to select and load the BIOS Setup Default settings.
4. Press F10 to Save and Exit.
5. Use the arrow keys to select Yes, then press Enter when asked Exit Saving Changes?
6. Follow the prompts to restart your computer. If the issue persists, follow the next steps.

Run hardware diagnostics test on battery and Charger:

Use the following steps to open the Component Tests menu.

1. Hold the power button for at least five seconds to turn off the computer.
2. Turn on the computer and immediately press Esc repeatedly, about once every second. When the menu appears, press the F2 key.
3. On the main menu, click Component Tests.
4. The Component Tests menu displays. Your Component Tests menu might be different, depending on the components installed on your computer.
5. To run both tests simultaneously, in the Component Tests menu, click Power Source, and then click Run once. Each component can also be tested individually.

AC Adapter Test:

The AC Adapter test provides an interactive test to determine if the AC power adapter is functioning properly. A good battery is required for this test. Before running the AC Adapter Test, HP recommends verifying that your computer can receive power by connecting a known working AC adapter.

Follow these steps to perform the AC Adapter Test.

• In the Component Tests menu, click Power, and then click an AC Adapter Test.
• Click Run once.
• The AC Adapter Test begins.
• When the test is complete, the results are displayed on the screen.

Battery Test:

Follow these steps to perform the Battery Test:

1. In the Component Tests menu, click Power, and then click Battery.
2. Click Run once. The Battery Test begins.
3. When the battery test is complete, the results are displayed on the screen. For additional battery information, click Battery Details.

If the test passes, continue with these steps:

1. Go to Start, search for Device Manager, and open this result.

2. Expand batteries.

3. Right-click on the ACPI option (usually the 2nd option) and select delete or uninstall. Follow the prompts.

4. Shut down the computer. 

5. Disconnect the charger.

6. Remove the battery.

7. Hold down the power button for 1 minute.

8. Insert the battery only.

9. Attempt to turn the battery on.

Hope this helps! Keep me posted for further assistance.
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

[simonmarshall]

---

@Echo_Lake wrote:

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help, however, to provide an accurate resolution, I need a few more details:

• Did this happen after a recent window or software update?
• Did you try another charger?
• Does the notebook shut down immediately (right after you unplug the charger)?
• Do you get any error message on your notebook (Such as Plugged in, not charging, etc.)?

---

Hi @Echo_Lake, thanks for responding.  Answers to the above:

• I don't think it occurred after a windows or software update.
• No, but it's not the charger and the battery charges fine when on mains power. 
• No, the laptop is fine running on battery.  
• No, there are no errors.

I appreciate you asked a standard set of questions, but it's fairly clear that the battery draining fault is not caused by the battery or charger.  I'm on the second laptop, second charger, third battery and third motherboard.

The battery draining fault only happens after the first time the laptop is hibernated (until I remove the battery).  If I don't hibernate, I don't get the battery draining fault with subsequent shutdowns (or hibernates). 

---

---

The link you included describes how to access and remove the battery, and this is what I did to "reset" the laptop when the battery draining fault occurred during my testing, as described in my original post. The points in the rest of your post were done when I originally raised this issue with the second laptop, and showed that the hardware and battery were fine, and BIOS was up to date.

[simonmarshall]

See the above notes over the days I conducted the tests.  The left column is the day of the week, the middle is the battery charge level observed when restarting the laptop on that day, and the right is the action I performed on that day after restarting.

Each day I did one "action" and nothing else, as described in my original post, followed immediately by a restart and shutdown.  The yellow lines link a hibernate action on one day to the observed battery charge level ~24 hours later.  As you can see, each time the action was some form of hibernate, followed by a restart and shutdown, the following day the battery charge was ~10% lower.  The "reset battery" notes refers to temporarily removing the battery for a short time.

If I do not reset the battery, the battery charge drops ~10% each day of shutdown until the battery is flat.

[Echo_Lake]

@simonmarshall

Thank you for posting back. 

I appreciate your efforts to try and resolve the issue. I would suggest performing system factory reset will put the computer back to the original factory settings in this way all corrupted and outdated software will be removed. 

While doing the recovery there is an option to backup your personal files. If you have not previously done one now is a good time. 

Restoring Files that were Backed Up Using HP Recovery Manager (Windows )You can also contact HP support for assistance. They can remotely access your system to help alleviate difficulties: www.hp.com/contacthp/

The HP Cloud Recovery Tool allows you to download recovery software to a USB drive. You can use the downloaded recovery image file in order to install the Windows operating system. 

• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04758961#AbT3to perform System Recovery (Windows 10) 
• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c06162205 to Use the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10)

Hope this helps! Keep me posted for further assistance.
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

[simonmarshall]

---

@Echo_Lake wrote:

@simonmarshall

Thank you for posting back. 

I appreciate your efforts to try and resolve the issue. I would suggest performing system factory reset will put the computer back to the original factory settings in this way all corrupted and outdated software will be removed. 

The HP Cloud Recovery Tool allows you to download recovery software to a USB drive. You can use the downloaded recovery image file in order to install the Windows operating system. 

• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04758961#AbT3to perform System Recovery (Windows 10) 
• Click here: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c06162205 to Use the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10)

Hope this helps! Keep me posted for further assistance.

---

Hi @Echo_Lake, thanks for the links.  I used the cloud recovery tool to do a factory reset.  On an immediate plus point, it successfully reinstated the windows store, needed to install an hvec codec, and which failed to reinstall when doing a standard reset.

I then repeated 2 of my tests to investigate the hibernate-battery-drain-state fault, first after performing a factory reset while keeping the laptop off wifi, and second after connecting to wifi and allowing windows to completely update. I wanted to see if a windows update caused or solved the fault, or made no difference.

In both cases, the 2 tests were:

1. powershell "shutdown /s /t 0" to shutdown
2. powershell "shutdown /h" to hibernate, immediately restart and immediately "shutdown /s /t 0"

As before, I waited 24h, rebooted and noted the battery level.  For the cases where the battery had drained after hibernate, I also temporarily removed the battery to reset it.

As you can see below, after the factory reset both before windows update (sat to mon) and after windows update (mon to wed), the hibernate-battery-drain-state fault still exists:

After a hibernation, immediately followed by a restart and shutdown, the battery drains ~%10 over the following 24h, regardless of whether windows had updated or not.

[simonmarshall]

I've reported this to support and after going through the usual updating to the latest BIOS, driver, etc, without fixing the fault, the latest response is that losing 10% of battery per day while shutdown is "fine".

Even when the fault is only triggered by a brief hibernate.

Even when it's the equivalent charge of a mobile phone battery lost while turned off.

[Echo_Lake]

@simonmarshall

Thank you for posting back. 

Let's try this: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c03383935 Sleep and Hibernate Issues (Windows 10, 😎

Keep me posted.

[simonmarshall]

---

@Echo_Lake wrote:

Let's try this: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c03383935 Sleep and Hibernate Issues (Windows 10, 😎

---

thanks, it was an interesting history of sleep/hibernation issues, though this one is different.  support have asked for me to return the laptop again.  fingers crossed that this time it is investigated and the laptop is not returned with the same reproducible fault.

[Echo_Lake]

@simonmarshall

Thank you for posting back.

I am glad to know that you managed to reach out to the store. Please feel free to contact us here anytime you need any further assistance.
Have a nice day ahead.