Microsoft is Forcing me to Buy MacBooks - Windows Modern Standby

For the last THREE years Windows laptops have been plagued by terrible battery drain while the user ISN'T EVEN DOING ANYTHING. It's gotten to the point where we can't recommend using a Windows laptop because of Windows Modern Standby.

FOLLOW US
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 - The biggest problem with Windows Laptops
1:10 - Build Redux!
1:25 - The Problem with Modern Standby
3:30 - Project Athena & Instant Wake
4:57 - Why Alex switched to MacOS
6:04 - Potential Fixes
8:35 - But... Why?
10:25 - Vessi!
10:55 - Outro

[andre_ss]

Disclaimer: I'm a Software Engineer at Microsoft, but I do not work on the OS team. I'm only here as a viewer who is subscribed to the channel. I decided to test out your guys hypothesis and I was able to reproduce it! I setup a test where I had a laptop running Windows Powershell listening on a port while connected to power. Every time a client connected, I would print the time at which the connection was made. From another PC, I would send a packet to that laptop and see the message being printed out. I then put the laptop to sleep, and after five seconds I would send another packet to the laptop. I then waited a minute and resumed the laptop from sleep.

The following behavior would change depending on whether or not the laptop was connected to power while going to the Sleep S0 state:

- If the laptop was connected to power when I hit "Sleep", after resuming from Sleep I would see the powershell window with the messages printed out with the time at which the laptop was asleep
- If the laptop was NOT connected to power when I hit "Sleep", after resuming from Sleep I would see the powershell window with NO messages printed out
- The above behavior would not change independently of what I did with the power cable DURING sleep - that is, even if I removed the power cable during sleep, then sent new packets, after resuming from sleep (with the power cable still disconnected) I would see the messages printed out, meaning the laptop was S0 Network Connected even on battery. Bug reproduced. Btw, the opposite happens if I connect the laptop to power during S0 sleep (no messages are printed).

I will try to contact the OS team with your findings and my test setup :)
Thanks guys! This is great investigative journalism!

***

For reference, my laptop is a Dell Latitude 7420 running Windows 11 22621.819, default UEFI settings.

Powershell code for reference:

On the server (laptop):
```
> $Listener =
> $Listener.Start();
> while($true)
> {
> $client = $Listener.AcceptTcpClient();
> Write-Host("Connected at " + $(Get-Date));
> $client.Close();
> }
```

On the client (another pc on the same network):

```
> $hostIp = "<machine network ip>"
> $port="52134"
> (new-object Net.Sockets.TcpClient).Connect($hostIp, $port)
```

[jthoward]

PLEASE keep the pressure on in short circuit and LTT videos, every single review of a Windows laptop should include a discussion of what sleep states it supports.

[mediocre_moto]

I worked out the "unplug before lid close" thing a few years ago after having several near meltdowns, or having the CPU fan crank up full blast in the middle of the night. I figured it was just a simple power manager setting I had screwed up - but based off this video it is a more complex issue. Good work, detectives.

[awa]

This is just ridiculous and shouldn't even be a problem in this day and age of personal computing. Anyone else feel like Windows is moving backwards??

[sliphere]

I've literally just been shutting down for years now. Don't even bother with sleep. This affects major companies too. Our IT department is constantly dealing with laptops that woke up in bags and fried themselves. It's crazy also that the modern sleep ignores temp limits.

[drkalamity]

This is probably one of the most important videos you guys have ever made. Almost nobody else has the time and resources to dedicate to something like this, THANK YOU for taking the initiative where Microsoft has failed.

[Eric-lwih]

This is still a big problem 10 months later. One of my older machines uses S3 sleep with zero battery issues, the other (Asus Vivobook) uses S0 Connected Standby which rapidly drains the battery. To make matters worse, Hibernate causes huge driver issues upon waking (forcing S3 sleep via new registry trick also causes driver issues upon waking). The only option was to use registry hacks to disable Connected Standby and Hibernate and just use regular, non-connected S0 Modern Standby which still drains the battery at roughly 1% per hour. Better than 5-10% per hour.

[Seanreagan]

I had a Lenovo for work for my last job and that happened so often. I had to fly around the country for that job and would sometimes wonder why the battery was so low or why the laptop was so hot. This makes so much sense now. Happier with my MacBooks.

[hlevolve]

I work in IT Support and get constant complaints over this stupid issue. I have over the past few years dug deeply into all of the fixes and registry settings you mentioned and also as you mentioned there is now virtually nothing i can do to help our users. For the people who seem to be constantly having this problem i have already moved them over to hibernate instead which so far they are happy with because at least they don’t open thier laptop back to a device that feels like it’s about to burst into flames with a battery that is nearly empty. This is a major issue with our laptop fleet and i hope this helps to push microsoft to get the issue resolved.

[OceanSky]

Congratulations LMG Team, this might be the most important service video you've produced recently! I'm so glad it exists because I just got myself a laptop for the first time in 7-8 years and I'm a Windows user.

[uzetaab]

This problem is way older than 3 years. The first time I heard of it was on the Microsoft Surface computer, so whenever the first of those was released was when it started.. Paul Thurrott brought it up a lot on the Windows Weekly Podcast.

[JanMichalSzulew]

I forced my Dell Precision 5570 to be in disconnected standby even on AC. It works most of the time, although the battery drains in standby are usually still "red" in powercfg /sleepstudy report. When I say most of the time I mean my last three attempts at standby resulted in a hot laptop hibernating itself after 15 minutes (due to draining 5-8% of battery). Sleep study report indicates that the drain is caused by "CPU C0 Time.Non-attributed Time". And the trail basically ends there, Google doesn't really know much about what "non-attributed time" could in fact be. There might be something in powercfg /requests and /requestoverride worth looking into.

[tomihawk]

So happy to see you take this up on behalf of consumers. I've spent the last few years frustrated that nobody was making more noise about this. I'm still running an old XPS 13 with an 8th Gen processor for my laptop and this has been the most frustrating thing about it. Every-so-often I tried to fix it and finally a few months ago, after years of trying, I figured out the powercfg and registry hack you described in this video from some deeply buried forum posts on random websites. It's been like night and day since. I can close my laptop at night and the battery is exactly the same when I open it the next morning. It takes maybe 3 seconds to wake up instead of 1. I can't believe we have to suffer this broken functionality for the sake of saving 2 seconds when I open my laptop lid. I'm overdue an upgrade and will 100% check that my next laptop has the capability for S3 in the BIOS before buying it. I'm never going back to an always-on laptop.

[cybernessful]

There is also another wonderful effect caused by this bug: on the Surface Pro machine if you close the lid, but left your Surface Pro plugged-in, the Windows decides to stop charging to prolong battery life (to not overcharge it), then it supposedly goes to sleep (because it is not powered anymore), but battery is still draining, because of the problem described in the video, then you open up a lid next morning to find that plugged-in Surface Pro is discharged.

[Ponen]

I didnt realize this was a problem, though personally I have never liked using sleep or hibernate or standby modes due to having faced issues with various pcs not recovering from the mode every now and then, so I always turn off my laptops when not in use. I also use the ltsc versions of windows so that also removes the bloat and updating hassles.

[kuhndj]

That is by far the best proposed reasoning for the broken standby issue. I generally use a high-end Windows laptop for work (loaded ZBook Fury currently) and for years now I've noticed the "standby but goes dead and overheats in my bag" issue. I actually blamed our IT folks, (assuming they installed some bloatware that breaks standby), switched lid closed to hibernate and went on with my life... albeit with substantially slower wakeup times when I crack the lid on my machine in the morning. The weird bit to me was the fact that sometimes it worked perfectly... and your explanation makes complete sense since in my office and at home I always run these machines on docks (60-90 minute battery runtime even when new means you need to live near a power station)... so they'd have the issue... but if I'd been in a meeting before I left I'd have been on battery and NOT seen the issue.

Brilliant catch Linus... I take back all the bad things I've ever said about you.

[Cody-tvqn]

@LTT I work in a large IT environment and used to manage the images for laptops/desktops in the environment. We spent MONTHS working directly with MS and HP fighting with this exact problem on Surface Tablets and HP Tablets. After months they finally acknowledged this as an issue and turns out it was related to wifi/network. It impacted machines worldwide, what a nightmare it was. We eventually gave up on them, but this issue started to crop up on laptops later as they started to support modern standby. There is actually a really good way to see exactly whats killing the battery using powercfg /sleepstudy I feel your pain with this one!

[Obscurai]

The biggest problem with this power drain issue is that a closed hot and possibly enclosed laptop is that the heat and full draw down of the battery severely damages the battery. This could lead to an early battery replacement at best or a laptop fire at worst.

[mayurlakhadive]

Great video! I thought I’m the only facing this issue with hp fury book. It’s always super hot in my backpack. Now I know the hack. Unplug and then close the lid. I hope Microsoft and Laptop manufacturers comes to their senses on this crappy standby implementation.

Thanks Linus and his team on doing this great job on figuring out this lingering universal problem.

[savageazn]

This used to happen with my older 8th gen Intel Dell Inspiron and it also happened with my 9th gen Intel and 5th gen AMD gaming laptops. For this reason, I bought a MacBook Air M2 to use daily and kept the gaming laptop at home because it would drive me nuts and left me questioning whether my laptop would be charged in the morning.