Toshiba Sleep-and-Charge

The Problem

The battery to my son's Toshiba laptop computer was discharging far more rapidly than my other two Toshiba laptops, even when completely turned off and the power unit unplugged. Recently, whenever I turn the laptop on after 2-3 days of disuse, the battery level was down to 80% or so. I have never seen the other two computers below 95% even under the same circumstances.

Proposed Solution

When I googled the problem, at least one blogger reported the issue as being caused by his laptop's Sleep-and-Charge feature. Sleep-and-Charge ports allow users to charge smart phones, MP3 players or other portable electronics even when the laptop itself is turned off. It so happens that my new USB external hard drives for both my son's and my daughter's laptops do not have an a/c power supply; instead, they draw power from the laptop itself.

If you have a Toshiba laptop, here is how to access Toshiba's Sleep-and-Charge utility:

• Click on the Windows Orb
• Click "TOSHIBA | Tools & Utilities | Sleep Utility" menus
• Uncheck the Sleep-and-Charge box

To see if that writer's suggestion even applied to my case, I disabled Sleep-and-Charge on my problem machine and then turned that laptop off with the intention of checking back in a few days.

Even if the battery were to then retain its charge, that raises the question: why just on that one laptop? Why do the other two Toshiba laptops remain unaffected?

The perfectly logical explanation suggested itself when I examined the settings on each machine: the Sleep-and-Charge feature was evidently turned off by default on both my daughter's and my own laptop, whereas it was apparently turned on by default only on my son's. The fact that only my son's laptop has this battery problem strongly suggested that Sleep-and-Charge might indeed be the cause of the problem.

Test Results

After I changed the settings and turned off "Sleep and Charge," I let the machine sit for a full 24 hours with the power off. When I finally did turn it back on, the battery had a full 100% charge remaining, not the 80-85% I had been experiencing. I then allowed it to sit for 48 hours with the power turned off. When I turned it back on after two full days, the battery still had a full charge of 100%. Both tests seem to indicate that the problem is indeed solved.

Final Observation

Upon further research, I discovered that on Toshiba laptops, Sleep-and-Charge USB ports are marked by a colored USB port (blue on my computers). I never knew the significance of the colored USB ports. In retrospect, it explained some phenomena that I did observe: not knowing any better, I frequently plugged my external USB hard drive into that colored port. Whenever I did, I noticed the hard drive's light on even after I turned off the laptop altogether.

In my ignorance, I never made the association. I should have, because the battery reading was really low when I turned the laptop on again after several days. However, I learned the wrong lesson: whenever I could remember, I used the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray to disconnect my external hard drive before logging off. That "solution" apparently only papered over the real problem. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "Doh!"

On my own Toshiba, there are only three USB ports, and none of them are colored. The user manual says any Sleep-and-Charge port will be marked by a vertical lightning bolt icon, but I cannot make out any lightning bolt on any of the USB ports. They all seem to have the standard USB icon, but it is very difficult to make out such tiny, black-on-black icons. I do not know if activating Sleep-and-Charge will activate all three USB ports or not - and I am not about to find out!

Postscript

Even though I solved the problem of the run-down battery by disabling Sleep-and-Charge, I still have to make sure I unplug the USB external hard drives before I turn the machine back on. If I make the mistake of leaving the hard drives plugged in during boot-up, the laptop cycles endlessly and never does boot up. I checked the BIOS and verified that the internal hard drive is checked first in the boot sequence and the external USB hard drive is last. It remains a mystery why the boot process still hangs, but that is a problem whose solution will have to wait for another day.