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Thank you for this, Freddy!
I followed many of your suggestions, though discovered that disabling:
USB Host Controller “27C9”
the last of the USB-root hubs in the listmeant that the NC10 no longer recognized anything when plugged into the USB ports. Re-enabled them, and all is good!
[quote1229185323=Szabs]
No updates at all and they are unnecessary because you have sp3? That’s kinda BS. The biggest hole in the system turned out way after sp3 was released.
[/quote1229185323]
I have updates on, and it doesn’t seem to bother the machine, but I know you can have Microsoft send you email notifications of updates instead, or simply go to “Windows Update” every now and then. Also, every big Windows security release seems pretty well telegraphed by the press.you can enable or disable anything in the device manager with good old batch files using Microsofts DEVCON. Ive already posted on it.
Although I use Kaspersky on desktop pc, Avira is running on nc10 until I fancy a change. I know McAfee, Norton (in particular) have improved their releases, but I have bad memories with them and look to others first out of habit.
You can speed up firefox – google “tweak speed firefox”
Updates aren’t always better… how many posts can you find on the web about problems since installing driver/bios/Windows updates?
Remember to unplug usb powered devices if you’re not using ’em
and running off the batteryChanging preferences of programs like Skype & Yahoo Messenger so they dont start with windows will help as well.
Thanks! I have removed this from the post now.
[quote1229195482=Serendip]
Thank you for this, Freddy!I followed many of your suggestions, though discovered that disabling:
USB Host Controller “27C9”
the last of the USB-root hubs in the listmeant that the NC10 no longer recognized anything when plugged into the USB ports. Re-enabled them, and all is good!
[/quote1229195482]Quote:You can turn off the USB, Webcam and so on and turn your lappy into a calculator. You can turn off the screen as well, so can you the hdd. Sure you save power but i highly doubt switching off the things you buy your netbook for is the best thing you can do…Like you said… it depends what you want from your netbook. I never use bluetooth or the webcam so I have disabled them both. If I ever do need them they’re only a few clicks away and in the mean time my battery life will hopefully be marginally improved.
Thanks for the info freddy, very useful.
UPDATE: Important!
After more research I have since modified the information about disabling the USB-controller.
We have a big problem here…Post edited, excerpt here:
“Disable the USB2 Host Controller 27CC (Please note: This WILL disable your USB-ports.)”
This controller drains more than 1W, sounds like little? It isn’t compared to what the NC10 as a whole draws. Please check the battery drain using programs like the built in perfmon or BattStat. See what happens with the drain disabling/enabling this controller…
When running perfmon, try to Add counter “Batterystatus”, often it doesn’t show the first time, do it once more and see if it appears, Then add the counter DischargeRate.
Easier approach is to download BattStat.
I have not found a workaround, not found a patch from MS. This is very much like the “bug” that was reported in 2006, obviously it has never been fixed. There is a patch from MS but it clearly states that it does not resolve this issue, only part of it – MS has still not updated XP to prevent the USB to drain this much power. Anyone else know more about this?I would very much appreciate if others would check the battery drain according to the above. We are talking about 15% of powerconsumption on idle more than necessary. This is even if you do not use the webcam, Bluetooth or any USB-ports, it is still draining more than 1W!
Depends on what you are after, my post is about powerconsumption. This info has since been updated, the problem was worse than I thought but now I really know why I seriously recommend to disable USB altogether.
(I’m not telling anyone not to update, I’m just saying what I recommend. It’s up to every single one to make their own decisions). My suggestions are however based on long time experience and in my humble opinion most of the updates from MS are just not worth it.
[quote1229210733=Szabs]
I didn’t mean to be negative, i just wanted to point out that there are flaws in the otherwise useful post. What you turn off is only the user’s business of course but telling them not to update… That’s just wrong. No offense.
[/quote1229210733]I would also agree that people should be sure they understand the risks of turning Windows updates off before considering this. It is true that some of the updates are very obscure but occasionally there are some important ones. If you turn auto updates off then I would suggest keeping an eye open for critical patches.
I have updated the info in my post about turning off Windows update so it’s more clear that turning this off is not recommended (by MS), but rather recommended by me, i.e my strictly personal opinion 🙂
New info in my post:
“UPDATE 14/12-08: Take the info about turning off USB-devices with a grain of salt, I’m doing some more research on this matter and see if some patch/update from MS fixes this problem. I am however pretty sure that running SP3 “out-of-the-box” causes battery drain from the USB controllers. I would really appreciate if more people look into this to test it.”Having run a few tests allbeit after settling in idle state – the biggest reduction of power drain on my machine is by disabling bluetooth. (no difference with usb hc 27cc on or off)
(27C9 is used by Broadcom 2045 bluetooth)
Although there was a problem/bug reported on XP SP2 where the pc couldnt enter ACPI & advanced Power Configs – The usb driver left asynchronous scheduler component running which prevented cpu sleep idle or C-states?
There was a MS patch for xp sp2 kb918005
Must have been fixed in SP3 as all seems fine
With bluetooth off & wlan on, I see drain is hovering 6watt idle and starting firefox it peaks at 10watts, so as a netbook, it does the biz more or less straight out of the box – cant see any major problems.
With a webpage just behind the excellent Batt Status proggy, I seeruntime over 8 hours and Power averaging -6.2 watts, CPU temp 35C. Disabling wlan makes little diff in drain – its how hard you run it
Idle state is obviously working very well
@Uggy: What settings for CPU and brightness have you tested with?
I see about a one watt difference with HC 27CC turned off. With four bar screen brightness, I average 7.6 watts with it off or 8.6 watts with it on, according to Battstat. Since I rarely connect anything to USB, I suppose I’ll leave it off.
Not that it makes a whole lot of difference. I’m usually near a power source but it’s interesting to see what can be done to max the battery life.
Question, how long is it taking more people to shut down.. If i close all apps and “turn off” the computer.. it takes minimum 20-25 seconds.. btw, thanks freddy for posting this.. very cool.
UPDATE: Info on turning off USB-devices like Bluetooth and Webcam now extensively researched and tested many, many times. The same pattern appears. Appropriate info now posted in the first post of this thread with some tips about how to disable / enable these in a quick fashion using MS’ Devcon app.
What I have found is that yes – you do get about 1W less power consumption doing this. There must be some bug in XP however, sometimes it idles with the devices enabled at a normal level, but not every time after boot/hibernate. It is in other words – inconsistent!
Only way to get rid of this problem that I’ve found so far is to disable them. I have also downloaded all updates from MS through Windows update, this does not correct this problem.
As you know I’m against these Windows updates so now I have to remove them again, thankfully this can be done in Add/Remove programs 🙂
@undo: Thank you for confirming my findings!
@Uggy: Thank you for the posts about the Devcon application!Could you please also post up the original values for the registry changes? (to undo the modifications)
I’ve followed these instructions and it has made my NC10 dangerously unstable- it goes to the blue screen of death a bit too frequently than you would like. At the end of the day I value stability and usability over battery life.
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