[LIB] Win2k power management pitfall

[Raymond]

Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 17:00:37 +0800
From: Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Win2k power management pitfall

Hi all!


Well I've finally decided to put 2k onto my L100 (along with the existing dual boot install of Win98SE and RHL6.2) ... significantly less painful than I anticipated, especially nice was the fact that *everything* had inbuilt driver support in 2k including my FDD, NIC and CD-ROM. It's also not slower than 98, at least not noticeably and networking actually works properly now. I also like how you can actually tell it to suspend or hibernate and that it would in fact do what you tell it to do. However, one thing about power management caught me out.

I run my libby with a power-on BIOS password (so when it comes out of hibernation, suspend or a cold boot, it sits asking me for a password before going any further). When at this screen, the laptop won't suspend itself after a certain amount of time and I'm *pretty* sure that at least some of the thermal shutdown triggers are disabled so it would take the processor's internal thermo to trip before the thing shuts down (you can see where this is going can't you?).

Now by default, Win2k sets the power profile such that the laptop suspends after 5 minutes and hibernates after 10. At first I didn't know this. So it was happily sitting there then 5 minutes passed and it suspended. I thought "Jolly good, I was going to do something else anyway" so I closed the lid and put it in it's box (the "cardboard deluxe" laptop case mentioned ages ago in case anyone was wondering), put the whole lot in my bag (between a few books ... VERY well insulated) and went to do something else. Came back several hours later and opened the box and wondered why the laptop was so hot (by this time the battery had fully drained).

Turns out, after 10 minutes (ie. 5 minutes after initial suspend), the laptop in fact wakes itself up (presumably so that in most cases, Windows can activate hibernation and shut it all down nicely). Problem is, when it woke up, it hit the bios password screen and had been sitting there ever since about 5 minutes after I packed it away, processor running and hard drive spinning, right up until it had fully discharged the (fully charged) battery (and converted all the resulting energy to heat over a period of several hours). Not a good situation at all. Especially given I was banging that bag around quite a bit during this time (I presume the hard drive was smart enough to at least park itself though).

I've since told it never to hibernate (so it won't actually try to wake up from suspend) ... I could have instead told it to never suspend and always hibernate but given the L100 uses so little power when in suspend (unlike the L50/70), I figured it wasn't worth the time difference.


Hope this helps someone avoid the same problem!


- Raymond

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