Laptops and netbooks are great devices but like everything else that is portable, the battery never lasts as long as you would like it to. Even worse is the prospect of the machine hibernating or shutting down just when you really need it. Of course, Windows 7 has the charging and time left icon, but it doesn’t give you much more information than that.
There are times when it might seem the battery isn’t lasting as long as perhaps it should, and that obviously means less time disconnected from the power supply. Windows 7 has many features to try and reduce power consumption like; powering down the hard drive, dimming or turning off the display, turning off unused devices and several more. But what if the power saving options are not working properly or something else is using your battery when it shouldn’t be? How would you know?
There is a built in utility in Windows 7 which can scan your system and give you a report on any potential problems with your laptops power consumption. It can also sometimes recommend what action can be taken to fix the issues, and what other options could be tweaked to help improve the battery life.
The feature is called the ‘Power Efficiency Diagnostic Report’ and can be accessed from the command prompt. It will monitor your system for around 60 seconds and give you the report in the form of an html file. For the best results, run this report when your computer is idle and there are no open documents or programs running.
Click on the Start Orb and type ‘cmd’ into the search box but don’t press Enter yet.
Right click on the cmd icon and select ‘Run as administrator’.
Now type ‘powercfg –energy’ into the command prompt and press Enter.
As mentioned earlier, the process will analyse the system for any possible power efficiency issues and takes about a minute to complete. Afterwards you will be given an idea of whether there are any areas of concern. Errors or warnings should be looked at in further detail by reading the report. If you have no errors then there are probably no major efficiency savings to be gained although there may still be a few minor tips to look at if you get a few warnings.
Now type ‘energy-report.html’ and press Enter. This will open the report in your browser to have a look at.
The report will show exactly what is causing problems with the power consumption of your laptop / netbook, and if possible will offer a solution or a tip on how the issue could be improved. As you can see, the report will not mean an awful lot to complete novices, but if you want to find out a lot more about what the results mean and to go into more depth about all aspects of the Power Efficiency Report, a .docx Word document from Microsoft may make an interesting read.