*** Microsoft Windows 11 Thoughts & Discussion Thread ***

lsg1r said:
The annoying thing is I know there is 'good battery life' in there, there's just something getting in the way. Having spent today playing around with stuff (more to do tomorrow), I'd say it's down to windows thinking it knows best, some background task I haven't found yet (I kept seeing random p-core spikes just sitting on desktop) or just good old dell bloatware (mcafee went day 1 lol).

I went and used powercfg commandlines to set the laptop to 'power save mode', which is annoyingly missing (still got to fix that and other bits) from control panel options, and it went from the more common 1-2 hours up to 12+ and then settled at around 8 hours (still not great but quite a big improvement), until I turned on battery saver mode which then took the battery life down to around 5 hours (yeah I don't understand that one either)
Click to expand...
There are definitely things you can do to improve battery life. Stopping startup and and services helps a lot, but it’s annoying to gimp things with battery saver too.

When Intel eventually release a fix for their core management, you should see a significant gain in battery life.
 
Donnie Fisher said:
Not something daft like the minimum CPU state being set too high in the windows powerplan ?
Click to expand...
Not that I can tell, control panel shows the usual 0/100 min max, even tried setting 98% max to supposedly stop turbo etc), unless it's doing something stupid behind the scenes (wouldn't be shocked at this if I'm honest lol).... having said that the options, even when custom, are pretty limited, I don't have power save or high performance in control panel (still got to do the reg hack) and without me running command line to force it it seems to be stuck with balanced.... which then works with the options in the win 11 settings panel where I can set 'best efficiency' etc and battery saver, neither of which really seem to work properly....

Didn't get a chance to do any more tinkering but today it was back saying it had around 1 hour at 90%, the fans were ramped up so something was clearly going on because I actually heard the fans turn off today, for all of 5 seconds...

I'm having another play this weekend but if I can't find the source of the battery drain it's probably going back (annoying as it's a nice laptop other than the battery life) under 14 days return policy. If it wasn't for the 14 day return window and warranty requirements of dell support software I'd likely just install windows 10 and see if that fixes it.
 
I had to go back to Windows 10, I lost the start menu and taskbar, i.e. there was nothing appearing on the bottoms and so had to run commands from task manager, and every time I tried to launch explorer.exe it was creating errors.

Then if I ran ms-settings: it would squirt out a file system error.

I had only been using windows 11 for a couple of days, but that was enough to scare me off! :D
 
Freefaller said:
I had to go back to Windows 10, I lost the start menu and taskbar, i.e. there was nothing appearing on the bottoms and so had to run commands from task manager, and every time I tried to launch explorer.exe it was creating errors.

Then if I ran ms-settings: it would squirt out a file system error.

I had only been using windows 11 for a couple of days, but that was enough to scare me off! :D
Click to expand...
I had to do a OS re install when W11 first came out so upgraded to W11 first. I used it for a few days and went back to W10 as well.

I was not a fan of the right click changes, task bar etc.

I know these can be changed but didnt want to pay for software to get functions that are fine on W10 and I am also in no rush to move to W11
 
ED209 said:
I had to do a OS re install when W11 first came out so upgraded to W11 first. I used it for a few days and went back to W10 as well.

I was not a fan of the right click changes, task bar etc.

I know these can be changed but didnt want to pay for software to get functions that are fine on W10 and I am also in no rush to move to W11
Click to expand...

It does look nice and is fast, but I think I'll just wait until it's more established.

I used a separate harddrive so no issues - but still a bit of a waste of time.

Bouton Aide said:
For new OS I tend to use a spare SSD drive to make sure things are going to work. Always got a spare SSD in my draw ready for stuff like this. It's been out a while now and matured loads.
Click to expand...

Yeah I did the same - but it's still just a bit of a pain.
 
lsg1r said:
Not that I can tell, control panel shows the usual 0/100 min max, even tried setting 98% max to supposedly stop turbo etc), unless it's doing something stupid behind the scenes (wouldn't be shocked at this if I'm honest lol).... having said that the options, even when custom, are pretty limited, I don't have power save or high performance in control panel (still got to do the reg hack) and without me running command line to force it it seems to be stuck with balanced.... which then works with the options in the win 11 settings panel where I can set 'best efficiency' etc and battery saver, neither of which really seem to work properly....

Didn't get a chance to do any more tinkering but today it was back saying it had around 1 hour at 90%, the fans were ramped up so something was clearly going on because I actually heard the fans turn off today, for all of 5 seconds...

I'm having another play this weekend but if I can't find the source of the battery drain it's probably going back (annoying as it's a nice laptop other than the battery life) under 14 days return policy. If it wasn't for the 14 day return window and warranty requirements of dell support software I'd likely just install windows 10 and see if that fixes it.
Click to expand...
Ah you have Dell laptop, what model is it?

I still looking for a new laptop with 12th gen CPU, been read reviews on new Dell Inspiron 17 laptop has worst battery life last 3 hours for browsing internet then read reviews on new Dell XPS 17 laptop has best battery life last 11 hours for browsing internet. New Dell XPS 17 look really very nice, think I will get one.

I got Dell Inspiron 7737 laptop since November 2013, a week later after bought it I noticed battery was fully drained when I tried to powered on, was searched the source of battery drain but found nothing, thought it may be caused by Dell software or Windows 8 or BIOS firmware. I decided to turned on keyboard backlight on and hours later when I finished used the laptop, I shutdown it but noticed the keyboard backlight was still turned on so I found the source of battery drain. Sometime laptop shutdown properly and sometime it not, I found a workaround to stop battery drain by pressed and hold power button to forced turned off power after shutdown the keyboard backlit was turned off properly. A month later I was on Dell forum searched posts on Dell Inspiron 7737 battery issue found everybody who owned the same laptop had same issue. Tried updated to latest BIOS A07, updated Dell software and drivers did not fixed battery issue. Fast forward to around July 2015, I checked Dell support site to see if there are new BIOS update to support Windows 10 and noticed there was a new BIOS A12 released on 22 Dec 2014 added Intel Smart Connect Technology support and a new Intel Smart Connect Technology 5.0 driver which I never heard of it before. I downloaded and updated both BIOS and driver then laptop was finally shutdown properly everytime with no further battery drains. I goggled to find details about Intel Smart Connect Technology, it designed to update programs by periodically waking your PC from Sleep/Standby mode for a brief period of time and Intel Smart Connect Technology requires features that must be built into the BIOS.
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
Ah you have Dell laptop, what model is it?
Click to expand...
Dell Inspiron 16 plus 7620, basically it's the only Inspiron with a 3060. It's basically pretty similar spec wise to the xps17, a bit thicker and a slightly smaller battery at 86w versus 97 on the xps.

I've been shutting down from the start menu and it all seems to shut down, battery doesn't drain down when it's 'off' anyway. It's all a little annoying because similar spec laptops in reviews last much longer than the inspiron and the last dell I had (a while back and 'business' admittedly) was absolutely fantastic. It could be I've just got a random bad one, I'll be chatting with dell support for a laugh but it's pretty obvious they'll be reading from a script based on review comments..
 
ChrisD. said:
How many hours are you getting?
Click to expand...
On a fresh boot, with a fully charged battery it's saying it's 1-2 hours, if i'm lucky it might say 3-4 hours but it will soon drop down, however I've gone and done some command line stuff (ie setting it to best battery, which is missing in control panel, reg hacks this weekend hopefully) and had it up to 12+ but it doesn't seem to stick. It seems like 'something' is draining the battery, it's just finding what it is (tried safe mode, couldn't even see my battery life...). Battery saver REDUCES the battery life for some daft reason....

This is on the desktop, no apps open and the ONLY thing I've installed is hwmonitor and I've uninstalled mcafee, I've disabled most background tasks and even lowered the wifi signal strength.

I don't think it's the battery, it's tested fine, hwmonitor is saying 86w etc.
 
Ok looks like I may have 'semi sorted it'.... Still can't get power saving option in control panel, probably something I can't fix in windows home (stupid ****)

After going on the dell website and downloading all the 'intel drivers' and installing them and then a registry hack to enable the drop down for performance boost mode (link for those interested) and then set it to efficient aggressive rather than aggressive... from 1-2 to 6-8 hours at 80%, reboot and it's back to 1-2 but if I enable power save and then disable power save it then goes back to 8+ hours. Clearly there is some driver/software which gets turned off by power save mode which is part of the issue.

Now just got figure out what piece of junk isn't going into low power mode on a reboot.... seriously got to love MS/Dell's QC on this.... why is everything turning into 'if you want it done right, do it yourself' these days!!!
 
lsg1r said:
Now just got figure out what piece of junk isn't going into low power mode on a reboot.... seriously got to love MS/Dell's QC on this.... why is everything turning into 'if you want it done right, do it yourself' these days!!!
Click to expand...

I've had a similar experience with several brands of laptop - I dunno if it is partly MS making things difficult but increasingly laptop software and drivers seems half-arsed - clean reinstall, searching out the best drivers and tweaks, etc. sadly seems increasingly necessary.
 
lsg1r said:
Ok looks like I may have 'semi sorted it'.... Still can't get power saving option in control panel, probably something I can't fix in windows home (stupid ****)

After going on the dell website and downloading all the 'intel drivers' and installing them and then a registry hack to enable the drop down for performance boost mode (link for those interested) and then set it to efficient aggressive rather than aggressive... from 1-2 to 6-8 hours at 80%, reboot and it's back to 1-2 but if I enable power save and then disable power save it then goes back to 8+ hours. Clearly there is some driver/software which gets turned off by power save mode which is part of the issue.

Now just got figure out what piece of junk isn't going into low power mode on a reboot.... seriously got to love MS/Dell's QC on this.... why is everything turning into 'if you want it done right, do it yourself' these days!!!
Click to expand...
That’s still atrocious, I had no idea Windows/Intel was so bad. I can use my Mac M1 Pro all day without any issue.
 
ChrisD. said:
That’s still atrocious, I had no idea Windows/Intel was so bad. I can use my Mac M1 Pro all day without any issue.
Click to expand...
To be fair I could have gone for a low power model of intel (ie a u model) which would last a lot longer but as with an m1 mac pro I wouldn't be able to do 90% of the things I've bought this laptop for (not to mention I can upgrade ram/ssd if I wanted to).... mind you I don't actually like macbooks, they have an irritating 'buzz' (it's micro vibrations due to insufficient electrical grounding) when I touch the casing which I can't stand.. the dell doesn't have that :P.
 
lsg1r said:
To be fair I could have gone for a low power model of intel (ie a u model) which would last a lot longer but as with an m1 mac pro I wouldn't be able to do 90% of the things I've bought this laptop for (not to mention I can upgrade ram/ssd if I wanted to).... mind you I don't actually like macbooks, they have an irritating 'buzz' (it's micro vibrations due to insufficient electrical grounding) when I touch the casing which I can't stand.. the dell doesn't have that :p.
Click to expand...
Never had that issue with the new models and I just run a VM for any Windows based tasks (very few these days).
 
ChrisD. said:
Never had that issue with the new models and I just run a VM for any Windows based tasks (very few these days).
Click to expand...
Funny because I felt it quite easily when I tried it in a store.... as to the VM, no good for my use case (3D CAD, bit of gaming)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom