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I have a problem whereby my laptop battery is dying overnight when the laptop is supposed to be hibernating.

The issue is reliably reproducible and seems to be triggered by having previously been connected to a monitor via USB-C.

After I have finished using my laptop for the evening, I'll close the lid and disconnect the USB-C cable connecting it to the monitor. Closing the lid should send the computer to sleep when on battery or AC power. I'll open the lid in the morning and get no response. The laptop doesn't respond when pressing the power button either. I have to connect the charger and then turn it on. Once in Windows I can see the battery is now charging from 0%.

I have run various reports from the powercfg utility and checked the Event Viewer but there doesn't seem to be any indication as to why the battery is draining.

The most recent occurrence of the issue was overnight 20/08-21/08.

From this chart you can see there's no data produced shortly after midnight on the 20/08. System Power Report Power State Transitions

Sleep Study power states This section of the Sleep Study report shows that at 21:40 I closed the lid on the laptop causing the screen off event. I then disconnected the USB-C cable causing the power state to change from Charge to Drain.

My understanding of the modern standby is a bit sketchy but I believe that at 21:46 my laptop went to sleep. It remained in sleep and various activities were still allowed for approx. 3 hours until 5% of the battery had been drained, when it moved into a hibernate state. According to line 107 it remained in a hibernate state for approx 8.5hrs. When I turned the laptop on at 09:24 on the 21/08, the battery was dead.

I checked the Event Viewer and found that the laptop does appear to go into hibernate at 00:46:50 as per the sleep study report.

Event Viewer - going to sleep

But then 1s later at 00:46:51 the laptop resumes from sleep (according to the Event Viewer)

Event Viewer - resume from sleep

I had considered there was some sort of Power Delivery issue from the monitor and charging over USB-C. To test, I connected a USB-C charger to the laptop, topped up the battery to 100% and left it for a few hours. The issue didn't occur.

I also found this post in a Dell community forum where another user has found that this particular monitor appears to violate the USB specification with regards to power delivery. I had assumed that the constant waking of the laptop would only occur if it remained connected to the monitor. In my case I am disconnecting the monitor after use.

If after this has occurred I reboot the laptop and refrain from using the monitor, this issue does not occur. The laptop will hibernate properly and use minimal battery overnight.

Tech details: Surface Laptop 3 Windows 10 Pro 20H2 Build 19042.1165 Monitor: Dell U3818DW

Can anyone suggest anything else I can try or any other reports I can look at to try to understand why the laptop appears to be failing to go to sleep/hibernate properly please?

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    Have you tried changing the order: First disconnect the USB-C cable and only then close the lid?
    – harrymc
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 11:48
  • 2
    Reset all power settings to default. Update Drivers (Windows Update for Surface machines), do a full restart and test.
    – anon
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 12:11
  • Nitpicking: You're suspending, not hibernating. If you were actually using hibernation it couldn't have any battery use, even minimal. Suspension, unlike hibernation, doesn't turn the computer off, it keeps the session "alive in RAM" thus using a minimal power indeed.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 12:36
  • @harrymc thanks for the suggestion. I'll try changing the order I do that in and re-test.
    – Adam Rice
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 13:19
  • @John Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check for updates now.
    – Adam Rice
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 13:19

2 Answers 2

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It seems the answer in this case was to change the order I was doing things. Unplug the USB-C cable, then close the lid. I did this yesterday evening and the battery was still at 100% this morning.

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  • So; your USB-device pulled power.
    – Hannu
    Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 10:54
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  • As @AdamRice stated, Sleep (AKA Suspend) puts the CPU into a low-power mode, which uses somewhat less power than when operating, but still drains the battery. In addition, devices plugged into a USB port may still get power.
  • If you wait until there's only 5% power left in the battery, there may no be enough to power the drive (SSD or HDD) to allow true Hibernation.
  • Lithium (and most other) cell chemistry does not take kindly to large power cycling, e.g., from 80% or 100% down to 5%. This greatly shortens the useful lifetime of the battery. Generally, never let the battery go below 20%, if you're not in desperate need to finish work.
  • True Hibernation uses no power, unless the USB power on during Hibernation setting is enabled. Be sure to turn off that option. Also, be sure you're PC is able to Hibernate, i.e., powercfg -h on has been set, there is enough room on the drive for hiberfil.sys, and, as mentioned, the battery has sufficient energy left to store RAM to that file.
  • Various triggers can wake a computer from Hibernation, such as Wake-on-LAN, mouse movement, key press, etc. Be sure to turn off the various wake-up options.
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  • Thanks for this. To clarify, the battery budget means that 5% of the battery can be used before it transitions to hibernate, not that the remaining battery is 5%. In my current setup, once the USB-C cable to the monitor has been disconnected there are no peripherals connected to the device. The laptop is able to go into hibernate and behaves as expected without the use of this monitor.
    – Adam Rice
    Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 6:33

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