What to do when Laptop Battery Drains Fast?

What to do when Laptop Battery Drains Fast?

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As laptops are common and popular nowadays, people face any type of problem with them too. One of the most common problems while using a laptop is that you may get an idea that your laptop is draining the battery very quickly. Sometimes it is true, while sometimes it is false. The change of up to 25% decrease in battery capacity can be neglected somehow.

But when the laptop does not work after one hour or lesser usage, that means there is a problem with the battery of your laptop. It can be either be a problem with the battery or the operating system running on it.

What to do when Laptop Battery Drains Fast? You should close background applications, adjust the screen brightness, use a cooling fan and take breaks to prevent your laptop battery to drain fast. It is recommended that you buy a good quality laptop battery that works for a longer duration.

Modern Operating systems tend to provide higher performance but sometimes lack power management to give their best performance. There are many things that you have to do on your own to manage the battery usage on your laptop. You might have to change some default settings or turn off unnecessary apps and many more.

Old laptop batteries give only 30 percent backup when they are being used continuously, it is very common that laptop battery drains fast even when you charge 100 percent. You should always buy a good brand laptop that has a good average lifespan.

But there is no need to worry about it. If you have a battery that has some life in it and you do not want to change the battery of your laptop, then you can do some precautions and changes in your laptop to make sure you use all of it. You will have to make some adjustments in your laptop and take some necessary precautions if you want your laptop battery to have a good cycle.

What to do when Laptop Battery Drains Fast?

In this article, we have explained the main reasons that consumes laptop battery along with the best methods to prevent this. We have also added pro-tips that will make your laptop battery last longer.

Use battery saving mode

You can use a battery saver to prevent your laptop from draining your battery. What does battery saver do? Well, battery saver turns off all the non-important apps that run in the background so that the power and memory is not consumed by them.

When they consume memory of your laptop, the processor works harder than before to deal with all the ongoing processes on your laptop. So, it consumes more power than it has been consuming before. Hence, if the battery saver is off, the laptop will not save any power and will work to its limit.

There are some other things like display control, memory management, power management and many other things that are being dealt with when battery saver is on. So, if you enable battery saver, it will increase battery life by almost up to 25% of the total.

To turn on the battery saver you can click on the notification icon on the bottom right. And turn on battery saver it can fix your battery problem. If you do not find an icon on the taskbar, then you can also turn on your battery saver in the battery settings of your windows.

Close background appilications

There is another method if the above method does not suit your work and you do not feel right to do that. You can either turn on the battery saver or you can control the apps according to your requirements.

Because the fact is background apps do consume the performance and power of your laptop. Let us suppose, you use your laptop for keeping office records and spreadsheets. But you have apps on your laptop which are for gaming, music, movies, etc. You do not use such apps and you do not open them frequently.

It is a best practice to choose those apps that you do not use on your laptop and either uninstall them or only disable them to run in the background. If you think you might need them once in a while, then you should only disable them.

To disable such apps, you should go to the setting of your laptop and then go to privacy and scroll down to the Background Apps. You will see a list of all apps that have been consuming the power of your laptop. Some need very high power some take minimal. You should only turn off all the programs that you don’t want to run in the background.

Bluetooth consume lots of laptop battery

There is another feature in your laptop that might affect the battery of your laptop and cause it to drain very fast, which is Bluetooth. The reason behind it is that, when the Bluetooth is on, the laptop is continuously searching for another Bluetooth device to connect nearby.

Not only finds for other devices, but the laptop also keeps its Bluetooth connection visible to every device nearby. So, it is consuming the power of your laptop when it is turned on. To turn off the Bluetooth of your device you can click on the bottom right corner of your taskbar and turn off the Bluetooth from the quick settings.

If you cannot find Bluetooth in that menu, then you can go to settings, select connections and then turn off Bluetooth from the Bluetooth menu.

Setup a power management plan for laptop

Another thing that you can do to prevent your laptop from draining the battery is that you can set a power management plan on your laptop. The power plan will decide everything for your laptop. A standard power plan is offered by the Windows operating system to make a timer for sleep, brightness and many more.

You can adjust the sleep mode timer; display turn off the timer and adjust the brightness of your laptop on both battery and AC power. In this way, if you are not using your laptop and leave your laptop turned on, it will manage the power according to adjustments made by you.

So, to set these things, you should right-click on the battery icon in the taskbar and select power options. Set the required values in that menu after selecting the power plan.

Windows search feature drains laptop battery

There is another feature that is not needed by the users is the windows search. Most people who have lots of data might use the feature of windows search option to search their files and data. If you do not need such a feature on the laptop, you can disable it easily.

Search services in the search option and open it and then choose windows search, you should stop it and set it to disabled if you do not want it to consume battery. You can enable if you want to use window search but it will consume the battery in the background.

Check laptop battery power frequently

We can check the power of the battery of the laptop that what status it is showing at the moment and how it is being charged. First of all, open your power option and check the status of your battery. If it shows that the battery is 100% charged then it does not mean that it is charged 100%.

To check its actual power, click on the start button and then go to the command prompt and click option on administration command prompt, when it open write power CFG space energy output semicolon energy-report.html and click enter.

Now go to start button and click on my computer, now click on the drive that contains an option of energy HTML click on it and you will see many options scroll down where it would be battery information. Battery capacity and battery last charge no will be there from which you can check the laptop battery power.

In my case, my laptop battery design is 5200 and its last charge is 426 which is very low about 10% it means I have to need to change my battery of the laptop. As it was showing 100 % charge but in reality, it was only 10 %.

Average time for the battery of the laptop

The average backup of modern laptops is approximately more than 4 hours but it also depends on the capacity (maH) of laptop built-in battery and how old the battery if the battery is very old its battery timing will be decreased.

More will be the applications running on laptop lesser will be the battery of laptop because it requires more energy to keep the program running. So, the average time of the battery with good health would be approximately 3 to 5 hours.

Look for Symptoms of laptop battery damage:

There are some signs and symptoms by which one can understand that’s its laptop battery is going to be damage:

1) The window of your laptop will warn you that your battery is getting low and it will die after some moments.

2) Your laptop will heat up after doing some small task on it; heating up of your systems is also a symptom of damage battery.

3) Your laptop will shut down abruptly without any warning, it also a sign of damage battery.

4) Your laptop will not charge like it was charging before, because of the effect in the battery.

Factors that cause laptop battery draining fast:

Some factors are responsible for the draining battery fast:

1) Display light: When your laptop screen light and brightness on 100 % it causes the battery draining fast. The brightness of the screen is a power-hungry part of the laptop. One should keep its laptop brightness on auto or minimum.

2) Old battery: If your laptop is 3 4 years old then surely its battery cannot give your proper functioning it drains fast. So, change the battery of the laptop because the battery has its time limit and age.

3) Irrelevant charger: Some people use another charger to charge the laptop in place of its company charger. It lowers the performance of the battery and it shows that it is 100 % charged but when you will use the laptop it will drain into 10 %. So always use the charger that is compatible with your laptop.

4) Graphics: Make sure that the graphics of your laptop should be less. High graphics consume more energy and more the battery and it drains down the battery very fast. So, one should have fewer graphics on your laptop.

5) Unstable power: Unstable poor supplies can also damage the battery. High or less voltage when passes through the laptop it gives a short circuit and its effects on the battery.   

Make sure that the power supply you are providing to your laptop is stable and giving sufficient voltage or not.

6) Overload programs: if your laptop running too many programs at the same time it will lower the battery of the laptop. Because the overload of many web pages and backup processes consume more battery so in the way laptop drains down its battery abruptly.

7) Bluetooth and Wi-Fi: Bluetooth and WiFi consume more battery of the laptop so always keep your laptop’s Bluetooth and WiFi off. And only turn it on while using.

8) Hardware devices: Hardware devices also consume battery, and old hard disks take more battery power for the usage of the hard disk. To remove the hard disk after its use and invest in the hard disk for less consumption of battery power.

9) Overcharging: Overnight charging the battery of a laptop can decrease the lifetime of the battery. One should plug off the laptop from charging when it gets charged.

Tips to make laptop battery last longer

Many tips can make your laptop battery run longer, some of which are as follows:

  • The brightness of the display should not be 100%. It is the most power-consuming part of the laptop.
  • Change your laptop power setting. Power saving mode should be enabled that less energy consumed by the battery of a laptop.
  • Go the right side of the laptop and click on the notification bar and switch off the wireless connection after your work. Because it consumes more energy of the battery.
  • Close all the tabs or programs that are processing in the background because it can consume more energy, close all the applications tabs and unnecessary data from the background of the laptop screen.
  • Remove the disc drives if you are not using it .remove it or use high quality of disk that does not require more power to start. Old hard drives take high voltage power which drains down the battery of the laptop.
  • If you are using an extra feature of the laptop then remove it because it will gain more energy like screensavers or any gadgets that are not necessary for the laptop to remove those features or disabled them.

You should take care of the battery of the laptop when you put it in your laptop make sure that you put a lock on it. Keep your battery away from liquid spilling. Do not remove it on a daily base. Keep away the dust from the battery of the laptop. It will make your battery life longer.

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