I have the same problem.... I get no warning and the machine hibernates when the drive bay battery is low. I can then restart without making any changes and the system will come back up and use the second battery without a problem. Since I bought the drive bay battery to extend my battery life this is frustrating. This seems to happen consistently.
Same here. I have hibernation disabled so mine goes into Stand By. This must be a Power Management failure of the BIOS rather than the OS. I also have a Precision M50 Workstation laptop and it depletes both batteries, primary and secondary, at the same time evenly. Or pretty close to at least. Furthermore, I have duplicated this same issue on a D600 running Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP1.
A co-worker and I with D800's have the same issue that is described in this thread ("You should change your battery or switch to outlet power immediately to keep from losing your work")
Both machines were purchased at the same time, and are running WinXP Pro w/the latest service packs and updates. Strangely enough, when the problem occurs on one machine (while running on battery power), the same issue will occcur on the other machine within 3-4 minutes.
We've tried various BIOS versions (from A8 to the most current), all with the same result.
When the first low battery prompt occurs, checking the battery power meter shows that the D-bay battery is almost completely discharged, while the primary battery is almost completely full.
The laptops seem to run ~2 hours on the D-bay battery before the problem occurs. It seems as if there is some type of problem switching from the D-bay battery to the primary battery (power management issue?). Removing the primary battery after the initial low battery prompt allows the laptop to run on the primary battery for a bit longer.
I've rec'd various recommendations from Dell tech support - replace the motherboard, replace the battery, reinstall the operating system.
I spoke w/Sheila at Dell today, who asked me to do the following:
1) Remove both batteries
2) Press and hold the pwr botton to drain all pwr from the machine
3) Plug in the AC adapter and restart the machine.
4) Press F2 to go into the BIOS settings.
5) Press Alt-F to reset the BIOS to the default settings.
6) Press Esc and save BIOS changes.
7) Insert the primary battery only.
8) Flash the BIOS to the latest version (A11 at this time)
Time will tell if this resolves the issue... (fingers crossed)
I too tried various BIOS hot keys with no luck :( My guess is that there is an actual bug in the BIOS which is causing that and will require an update to fix. If anyone following this thread does find a solution, please take the time to post back and everyone know.
I believe that you are correct. This issue will not be resolved with using any of the previous BIOS updates. The power management issue is not OS based. I have submitted a request to our large national sales rep to address this issue. I will post what I find out.
Well - time for the bad news. My company has Gold support at Dell and I had a chance to work with an engineer on the issue. After long debates Dells' stance on the issue is, "That is how we designed it." I tried to argue the point that their other models do not deplete the batteries in this way but they would not deviate from their position. Subsequently, there is no planned BIOS update to resolve this issue.
I wish I had better news. Dell has really let me down on this one. In working with their support over the years I never had anybody bail on an issues like I did on this one.
Well, it may be designed to deplete one battery before the other, but hibernating when the D-Bay battery is depleted and the main battery is full is just plain buggy behavior.
I have been dealing with this issue for a very long time.
The best work around I have found is to tweak the standby threshold to be 2 %.
In BIOS A05 the following 'improvement' was made ...
5. Improved dual-battery discharge algorithm. Discharge secondary
battery first to 3%, then attempt to discharge primary battery to 3%,
then secondary to 0% followed by primary to 0%.
If the threshold is 2% then the bios does the battery switch before the OS does the standby.
There is a bit of a problem because as the batteries age the drop off in available battery power is faster, and this approach is not always reliable, but it works most of the time.
"...Dells' stance on the issue is, "That is how we designed it..."
Hmmm, that seems to be a strange stance, especially give the fact that they replaced the motherboard on my machine, in an attempt to resolve the issue.
On the two machines where I've seen the problem, it started suddenly (after over a year of use w/o problems), which makes me think it was related to some type of update.
The info about the A05 BIOS seems relevant, but why make such a change mid-stream, and what is the point of having two batteries if you can't use them both continuously?
tnufire
2 Posts
0
September 13th, 2004 00:00
I have the same problem.... I get no warning and the machine hibernates when the drive bay battery is low. I can then restart without making any changes and the system will come back up and use the second battery without a problem. Since I bought the drive bay battery to extend my battery life this is frustrating. This seems to happen consistently.
Tim
mcglom1
8 Posts
0
September 17th, 2004 03:00
mcglom1
8 Posts
0
September 17th, 2004 03:00
kjp4
4 Posts
0
October 1st, 2004 21:00
I have the same problem.
I have updated to the A14 BIOS, and changed the battery gauge control panel to display a single 0-100% reading (combined for both batteries).
It did not help or change the situation.
Hotrod
4 Posts
0
October 5th, 2004 21:00
A co-worker and I with D800's have the same issue that is described in this thread ("You should change your battery or switch to outlet power immediately to keep from losing your work")
Both machines were purchased at the same time, and are running WinXP Pro w/the latest service packs and updates. Strangely enough, when the problem occurs on one machine (while running on battery power), the same issue will occcur on the other machine within 3-4 minutes.
We've tried various BIOS versions (from A8 to the most current), all with the same result.
When the first low battery prompt occurs, checking the battery power meter shows that the D-bay battery is almost completely discharged, while the primary battery is almost completely full.
The laptops seem to run ~2 hours on the D-bay battery before the problem occurs. It seems as if there is some type of problem switching from the D-bay battery to the primary battery (power management issue?). Removing the primary battery after the initial low battery prompt allows the laptop to run on the primary battery for a bit longer.
I've rec'd various recommendations from Dell tech support - replace the motherboard, replace the battery, reinstall the operating system.
I spoke w/Sheila at Dell today, who asked me to do the following:
1) Remove both batteries
2) Press and hold the pwr botton to drain all pwr from the machine
3) Plug in the AC adapter and restart the machine.
4) Press F2 to go into the BIOS settings.
5) Press Alt-F to reset the BIOS to the default settings.
6) Press Esc and save BIOS changes.
7) Insert the primary battery only.
8) Flash the BIOS to the latest version (A11 at this time)
Time will tell if this resolves the issue... (fingers crossed)
Hotrod
4 Posts
0
October 7th, 2004 13:00
Unfortunately, completing the above steps did not resolve the issue.
Currently working w/Dell Support on other options...
tnufire
2 Posts
0
October 7th, 2004 15:00
I too tried various BIOS hot keys with no luck :( My guess is that there is an actual bug in the BIOS which is causing that and will require an update to fix. If anyone following this thread does find a solution, please take the time to post back and everyone know.
Thanks,
Tim
mcglom1
8 Posts
0
October 7th, 2004 17:00
Hotrod
4 Posts
0
October 13th, 2004 14:00
kjp4
4 Posts
0
October 15th, 2004 22:00
The only fix I found was to go into the power setup control panel, and turn off the feature that hibrenates when the battery reaches 3%.
So, there are no circumstances where I allow the machine to hibernate on its own.
With this change, I have not had a hibernation problem when the laptop switches over from the supplemental battery to the main battery.
wpns
8 Posts
0
October 15th, 2004 22:00
Anyone know how we get Dell's attention (*) and get them to fix the problem?
(*) Yeah, you'd think that posting in the Dell forums would mean something, but don't get me started...
mcglom1
8 Posts
0
October 18th, 2004 12:00
Well - time for the bad news. My company has Gold support at Dell and I had a chance to work with an engineer on the issue. After long debates Dells' stance on the issue is, "That is how we designed it." I tried to argue the point that their other models do not deplete the batteries in this way but they would not deviate from their position. Subsequently, there is no planned BIOS update to resolve this issue.
I wish I had better news. Dell has really let me down on this one. In working with their support over the years I never had anybody bail on an issues like I did on this one.
wpns
8 Posts
0
October 18th, 2004 15:00
8*|
beastiehomer
1 Message
0
October 19th, 2004 04:00
battery first to 3%, then attempt to discharge primary battery to 3%,
then secondary to 0% followed by primary to 0%.
Hotrod
4 Posts
0
October 19th, 2004 15:00