Asus R1F freezes on battery power

[scrambler]

My Asus R1F does not want to work on battery power anymore.

If I boot on the power supply then disconnect the battery, after 10 or 20sec it freezes, and I can only shut it down by holding the power button for a few seconds.

If I try to boot on battery power, it will start to boot, I can usually get to the desktop showing up, and then it freezes.

I first thought the battery may be bad, I have both a main battery and the one that goes in the removable bay, I tried with both same thing. In the off chance both batteries were bad (they have a few years on them), I bought a new battery, same thing.

This is starting to smell like a HW problem, but I though I would check if anyone has had a similar problem.

Thanks

[Grinner]

Nope, never heard of that problem (or had it thank god).
But since you seem to be getting to the boot screen (or at least get windows to load) it may be something wrong with that.
I would try downloading a live CD ( clicky ) with Ubuntu and boot from that. Then remove the Power supply and see if it still crashes. If it does then it's a HW problem, otherwise it's windows.
Good luck.

[scrambler]

Actually, after being able to start in bios and stay there for a while, I started thinking it may be SW after all. I created a new power saving mode with everything at max power usage (no power saving feature active), and the laptop does not freeze any more while going on battery alone.

Now trying to isolate which power saving function creates the problem, I am down to only having PCI power saving and Screen power saving OFF and so far it seems to be working.

I wonder if a HW problem could cause these to stop working, or if may be the ACPI driver is corrupted.

Feedback still welcome

[ddc]

I already posted this in a different thread, but I'll say it again here. After I swapped out the stock Fujitsu HDD with a Samsung M6 320GB HDD, my computer would freeze in a matter of minutes on battery power but never on AC power. It was extremely frustrating, as I was using the tablet to take notes in class. After trying many different things, I figured out that the problem never occurred in High Performance mode, when all power management was disabled. Although I haven't tried to isolate the specific problem, I do know that with PCI power management on, it did not cause problems for me.

I think I've read of other laptops having this problem (power management causing lockups), so it may not be unique to the R1.

[weinilourson]

I have that problem too. My batteries (I have 2 main batteries, the 2nd one bought 1 year after I first got my R1F in Oct 2006) don't last over 1 hour anyways, so I just have to lug my power cord around.

Asus never solved the battery issue...

[Grinner]

well, actually they did solve the battery issue. I have a R1F which I bought in 2006 (October too) and it had the battery problems. A year later I sent the battery in to be replaced and now my battery has only lost about 10% of its charge in the last 1.5 years. Maybe you should contact ASUS and see if they can't replace your batteries too, since its definitely not loss due to wear.

I actually also had the lockup issue for a while, but it only happened with vista SP1. If I deinstalled the service pack everything would be back to normal. I now have Windows 7 and have yet to experience a crash. Maybe that's worth checking out.

[weinilourson]

Thanks Grinner... I'll try to see if replacing the battery helps.