Hello! My girlfriend’s HP laptop running kubuntu 24.04 has this problem: when it’s turned off (either from the GUI or poweroff) it discharges overnight, from 100% to 0% in a few days.

I searched the web to look for fixes:

  • wake on lan is disabled in the BIOS
  • USB ports have no settings in the bios, but there’s nothing connected to them anyway
  • the system is actually powered off, not sleeping (at least if poweroff actually works)
  • everything, firmware included, is up to date

She doesn’t remember having this problem from the beginning, but cannot tell when this started occurring

Did any of you ever encounter this problem? I don’t know what else to do, and it’s quite annoying.

Thank you for your time!

  • @y0din
    19•3 months ago

    does this happen if you force it to shut down by holding the power button for +10sec, or if you remove and reinsert the battery after power off?

    forcing a shutdown or removing and installing the battery, will ensure that the laptop is indeed shut down and not just halting during the shutdown process.

    if you still have the same issue after this test I would guess your battery is dying, but if not you know that the issue is a software and not a hardware problem…

    anyway, best of luck getting it sorted

    • @Magister
      9•3 months ago

      on most new laptops, you cannot remove the battery that easily, you have to disassemble the back cover ☹️

      • @Landless2029
        5•3 months ago

        I hate this about new laptops…

        I miss the old switch on the bottom.

      • @y0din
        4•3 months ago

        That’s true, but long press on the power button still works, so you can try that instead then? 🙂

    • tubbaduOP
      1•3 months ago

      I’ll try it as soon as I can, thanks for the suggestion! I don’t think the battery is dying, because while powered on the battery life is very good

      • @y0din
        2•3 months ago

        let’s hope it’s a software issue, in general it’s much cheaper to fix software than hardware 🙂

        you can also try using the “sudo halt --poweroff” command.

        if it ks software related. that command will force an instant shutdown ignoring all normal shutdown run levels (use with caution if you have open files that need to be saved in advance).

        if that command succeeds as well after the battery test, you can be sure the problem lies within the shutdown run level scripts, which should help you narrow it down even more.

        • tubbaduOP
          1•3 months ago

          okay, I think we have some news: if I kill the pc by holding the power button, after a night the battery loses 0%! so I guess the problem is that it’s not shutting down properly. I tried to sudo halt --poweroff and it drained the battery as usual. I then tried sudo halt -f and something strange happened: the screen immediately turned off, but the red LED on the volume key indicating that the volume is muted stayed on, so the pc wasn’t completely off. what could be the problem? and why does this happen only when I force the halt? could it be a kernel issue?

          thanks for the help and for your time!!!

          • @y0din
            2•3 months ago

            Hi, a bit busy today so I can investigate some more later, but the problem you are describing is in many cases related to the kernel version and has been resolved by up or downgrading the kernel version.

            it might be worth looking into, at least it’s a simple task, while I get some more time to investigate or offer more for you to look into.

            great that it worked so far, at least now you know where the problem is :)

            • tubbaduOP
              1•2 months ago

              I’ll try other kernels then, but I don’t know how to check if the system is actually powered off or not without waiting 8 hours and checking the battery drain XD perhaps the halt could be the key

              thanks!! I’ll update the thread if I’ll discover something new

              • @y0din
                1•2 months ago

                the halt command is like a handbrake for the kernel, so it basically shuts everything down hard and stops, but it does not power off the system without you telling it to, so that is why your LEDs stayed on after you used the other parameter.

                you could just try to downgrade/ upgrade the kernel, do s shutdown for a few hours during daytime when the computer is not beeing used, then turn it back on and check the percentage.

                you will see the drain if it’s not a full night, but it might not be so drastic.

                if it’s completely shut down there should be no loss in percentage, even for a short period of time as there probably is now…

                I’ll try to think up another solution, but a bit busy today as I mentioned on the last post

  • @y0din
    9•3 months ago

    do you have any usb devices, like external hard drives, chargers or similar connected to it? a lot of the laptops allows for usb charging/supply of power even when switched off, and this could be one of the sources for the drainage.

    try disconnecting all USB cables if any are connected and see if the problem disappears?

    never mind, did not see the line about no connected usb cables until after posting

  • @[email protected]
    8•3 months ago

    My wife’s HP laptop does this as well (she is running Windows). A previous laptop did this and a BIOS update fixed it. For most laptops the official response from manufacturers seems to be: eat shit.

    • @[email protected]
      2•3 months ago

      My son’s Windows laptop did the same. Turns out there is a setting to make Windows truly shut down when selecting “shut down” from the menu, because normally it secretly sleeps or hibernates or something to have faster start-up times. There’s also the power another device via USB option that you may have to disable in BIOS / EFI settings.

  • @TechAdminEnglish
    8•3 months ago

    There’s a feature to allow charging from USB ports while a computer is off, Lenovo calls it “Always on USB.” That feature is constantly using power even when nothing is plugged in. To test if any ports have that feature power off the computer then try plugging in a simple 5v 500ma usb device to charge. If it starts charging then it has that feature and will drain power. If no options to disable in BIOS then as far as I know stuck :(

    I’ve worked on a couple recent gen refurb laptops (dell and lenovo) with that feature but lacking any disable option in BIOS. I’ve tried to get into the habit of plugging in whenever not being used but still end up with things empty more often than I like. Very frustrating and I think only hope is future bios update to give that option.

  • @[email protected]
    8•3 months ago

    Some level of self-discharge happens over time with even a disconnected battery, but that does seem greater than expected. I’d suspect hardware issues, to be honest. Batteries are fickle little creatures that deteriorate over time no matter what you do. Maybe it’s misreporting the amount of charge left to the OS.

    • tubbaduOP
      1•3 months ago

      Probably there are problems with the report to the OS because the battery health is marked as 100%, which is a bit strange for a 4yo pc. Do you think this may have something to do with the battery drain?

  • @[email protected]
    5•3 months ago

    Laptops now use the internal main battery as a replacement of the cmos rs2032 battery (in a lot of em at least).

    Not that such a low draw cause this level of drain. Maybe the battery is going out as well.

    • @[email protected]
      4•3 months ago

      The CMOS battery has maybe 100mA and lasts 5 years. A laptop battery has at least 400x the capacity, it would not drain in a few days.

    • tubbaduOP
      1•3 months ago

      I checked and yes, there’s no cmos battery in it. Do you think this may have something to do with it?

      • @[email protected]
        2•3 months ago

        Hard to say. But it’s something to consider. Lots of other worthwhile suggestions I see too. Hopefully it’s not a combination of things.

        Let us know how it goes!

  • Strit
    4•3 months ago

    I’ve had a similar issue with most of the laptops I have owned. The battery just discharges slowly when the device is turned off.

    I have no idea what causes it or if it can be fixed.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•3 months ago

      Instead of having an efficient chip monitoring the power button, they integrate that job into some 10nm chip. That chip doesn’t get to power off, so it just pisses away power on gate leakage all day long.

  • CralderEnglish
    3•3 months ago

    This happened to my Surface pro 4 with both Windows and Linux. Could be a hardware issue.

  • sag
    2•3 months ago

    I have HP Notebook. This issue also happened to me. It was a battery issue. I just changed the battery.

    • tubbaduOP
      2•3 months ago

      The battery health is marked as 100%, which seems strange to me. However, the battery life while powered on is very good, so I don’t think the battery is old or exhausted. Do you think that changing the battery may be the solution?

  • @[email protected]
    2•3 months ago

    I would check the journalctl logs to ensure it is fully turning off. If here is still battery drain and you are sure the laptop is off, then its a hardware issue rather than software.