Some owners of Windows 7 machines are complaining that the newest Microsoft operating system may be causing battery problems. Microsoft said it’s investigating the issue.
On the Microsoft support site and elsewhere, there are a variety of battery-related complaints, and many commenters believe the cause is Windows 7.
‘Related to System Firmware’
The problems include batteries that are prematurely drained or reported to be so, batteries unable to hold a charge, warning lights indicating a battery needs to be replaced before it should need to, and more.
In a statement to news media on Tuesday, Microsoft said it is “investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners, which appears to be related to system firmware.” It added that “the warning received in Windows 7 uses firmware information to determine if battery replacement is needed.”
The BIOS firmware boots a computer and initializes such components as batteries.
Complaints about batteries and Windows 7 started populating Microsoft’s Windows Client TechCenter forum last June, before Windows 7 was formally released.
On June 5, a poster called DanLee81 noted he had been “receiving an error message saying ‘Consider replacing your battery.'” However, he noted that he knew “for a fact that the battery is good,” as it was only about four months old and worked fine under Vista. He also reported that he updated his BIOS.
On Wednesday, about a dozen postings on the same forum indicated similar problems on a variety of computer models. “Wow, I’m in the same boat here with a HPDV6600,” noted a poster named Rendezvous, who added that the battery died as soon as Windows 7 was installed.
Another user, apniceone, reported a similar problem on a 12-month-old Dell XPS M1330. “After updating to Windows 7 Ultimate, the problem started,” apniceone wrote.
‘Not Clear How Widespread’
Laura DiDio, a research fellow at Information Technology Intelligence Corp.,…