Lenovo ThinkPad T400 Battery Life on Windows 7
Posted by: djjlewis on: 08/10/2009
UPDATE: Since posting, Lenovo has now released full Windows 7 support and drivers for the T400 including a working switchable graphics driver. Just download and run System Update 4.0 from their website. If you have previously disabled the ATI card in the BIOS to work around the battery drain problem, you will need to re-enable it in order for System Update to recognise and offer the switchable graphics driver.
I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now (since RC1) on my Lenovo T400 ThinkPad and have noticed of late the abysmal battery life I have been getting. It only has the 4 cell battery but even so, in Vista I was getting 2:30 – 3 hours of use when on battery. Just recently with Win 7 I had been struggling to get even an 1 hour so I knew something must be up. I had the ThinkVantage power manager app installed from the Lenovo Windows 7 beta drivers page, but wondered if (being beta) this was causing a problem so I decided to reinstall Win 7 from scratch and see what the story was with no beta drivers (just the ones that come via Windows Update). Unfortunately, it was the same as before – maybe a little higher at 1 hour 15 mins but still way under what I was getting with Vista. In a bit of an Ah-ha! moment, and as there is no switchable graphics driver for Win 7 yet, I wondered if the discreet ATI card may be draining the power. I rebooted into the BIOS and forced it to use the integrated graphics chipset (Intel) and now I am back in the 2 hour + zone for battery life. Much better!
5 Responses to "Lenovo ThinkPad T400 Battery Life on Windows 7"
21/11/2009 at 14:48
But the problem still wasn’t solved, because on Vista t400 with 6 cell has about 5+ hours. In W7 it hardly gets to 4 hours.
Lost of about 1 hour!!!!!! And for one who managed to get used to use my laptop for more than 4 hours without any worries, it’s a real issue!
14/12/2009 at 04:24
I am also having the same problem, i just recently installed win7 64bit on my T400 and now I am having only round 3-4hours battery life for a 9 cells one even after I switched to the Intel graphics using the drivers provided by lenovo. Is there anything else we can do about it? I often have to use computer without power supply, and that was the reason i use 9 cell!!!! So upset!!!
05/02/2010 at 09:36
Thank you for sharing your information. At least by forcing to one video card, the battery life increase, not too bad.
I use 9 cells T400 and normaly work with 9 hours on battery. It became 4 hours in Win7. After forcing to 1 video driver, battery life become 6 hours. Still lost 3 hours.
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04/11/2009 at 14:43
I’m having similar problems. If your ATI card was off, (you were in the “Energy Saving” graphics mode), how is it drawing power?
09/11/2009 at 10:12
As there wasn’t a switchable gfx driver for Windows 7, it seems that both the ATI and Intel cards were forced on, and thus drawing power. It meant I had to go into the BIOS and specifically disable the ATI card in order to stop it draining the battery.
It should be a non-issue now as Lenovo have released proper drivers for Windows 7 (including the switchable gdx driver). You just need to install System Update 4.0 from their website and let it do all the work.