6. Performance: The Windows XP Battery Drain Problem, Finding The Easter Egg

Though TG Publishing has tracked down a good deal of information about the battery drain problem related to Microsoft's Windows XP SP2 USB driver, we've only looked at it on a few computers. I had a new Centrino Duo notebook in my hands and I couldn't wait to see how it functioned in light of the battery drain problem. It's important to note, as our earlier research points out, that the problem can happen on any Windows XP SP2 mobile computer, not just those that use Intel's new Centrino Duo technology.

The Fujitsu Lifebook N6410 arrived with Windows XP Media Center Edition installed. Though MCE is not XP SP2, I decided to run some tests to see how the notebook faired battery-wise without and with Microsoft's original patch for the XP SP2 battery drain problem. This patch is discussed in the TG Publishing stories mentioned at the beginning of this article. As those stories indicate, based on agreements with Intel and Microsoft, we cannot reveal the patch or where you can find information on it. As with the tests done by Harald Thon and Bert Töpelt for the earlier stories, I used BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 Reader test. I ran all of the tests multiple times to assure accuracy.

In my first test, no patch was installed. The computer ran for 1:29 (1 hour and 29 minutes) with no external USB device attached and for 1:27 minutes with an external USB 2.0 hard disk drive connected and turned on. No big difference there.

Next I tried the same test with the patch. With no USB device attached, the battery lasted 1:34, only 5 minutes longer than in the no patch/no external device test. As I would discover later, 5 minutes is not insignificant for this computer. It appears that the patch makes for a small additional amount of battery life when used with Media Center Edition. With the external USB 2.0 hard disk drive attached, the battery ran out after 1:32 minutes. This is the same two minute difference as in the first test. Is there a pattern here?

But, why was there essentially no difference without the patch whether an external USB 2.0 device was attached or not? Rather than continue to struggle with the unknowns of Media Center Edition, at this point I decided to try answering this question using Windows XP Pro SP2.

The first challenge I faced with XP Pro was finding and installing all the drivers for the hardware. These drivers were pre-installed on the copy of Media Center Edition that came with the computer. Fortunately, though the N6410 was not on the market when I did my testing, I was able to find the drivers on Fujitsu's website. I downloaded the ones marked for Windows XP and installed them. Each time I installed a driver, I checked Window's Device Manager to see that one or more unknown devices had disappeared.

After installing all of the drivers, I noticed a device named only "882" with one of those sickeningly yellow icons indicating that its driver was not installed. Then I ran Lavalys' Everest Ultimate Edition 2006 to see what components were in the Fujitsu notebook. Everest listed a device with the name 882 and identified it as a USB 2.0 device. All I could say and in much less refined language was, "What the heck is that?"

No USB 2.0 device was connected externally, so it must be inside the computer. I returned to Fujitsu's website and took another look at the drivers that were available. I had ignored the two drivers for Media Center Edition. One was called "ColorAdjust," the other "TV Tuner." There was no description of either, but "TV Tuner" sounded like it might offer some hope.

I downloaded and installed the driver. Voila! The unknown device "882" disappeared from the unknown devices list in Device Manager. Had I discovered the N6410's little hardware Easter Egg, a USB 2.0-based internal TV tuner/video capture device, that was the source of the notebook's apparent failure to abide by the laws of physics as defined by Microsoft? Perhaps, but the important thing is that I was ready to test for battery drain under a number of controlled scenarios.

Was it the Fujitsu Lifebook N6410's USB 2.0 internal TV tuner/video capture device that wreaked havoc on the notebook's battery life under Windows XP?