Core Duo Power Sapping Bug is Microsoft Issue 109
illusoryphoenix writes "A few weeks ago, Tom's Hardware noted a significant reduction in battery life of the Core Duo processors it tested when USB devices were inserted. Intel claimed that Microsoft had a bug in their USB drivers, while Tom's Hardware was unable to reproduce the same result for any of the other Pentium M microarchitecures. This issue has finally been publicly confirmed by Microsoft to be a USB driver problem which keeps the processor from entering advanced sleep states."
Oh My God! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh My God! (Score:3, Funny)
Didn't you hear??? Apple is switching to MS Windows, I heard it from a reliable source! And Linux costs just too much to run, we're all out of alternatives!
Re:Oh My God! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it affects Pentium Ms as well, according to Anandtech.
"It's already been two weeks and they haven't fixed it yet!!"
Microsoft first identified the issue and published a Knowledgebase article July 12, 2005. That's a little more than 2 weeks.
In fact, the regedit quickfix they're recommending was also published on that date
Re:Oh My God! (Score:2)
Dupe + Fix link (Score:2)
Re:Oh My God! (Score:1)
Thats the joke that sailed way over your head and smacked into the wall.
Re:Oh My God! (Score:2)
And Vista won't ship until the end of this year. You do understand how Microsoft works, right?
Re:Oh My God! (Score:5, Informative)
There's a driver glitch with brand new hardware!!!
From the TFA Nope, not new hardware. USB is not new. The core duos just made the problem more obvious.
It's already been two weeks and they haven't fixed it yet!!
From the TFA So, its actually been over six months and they haven't fixed it yet.
As usual, Microsoft waits for an issue to become public before bothering to fix it.
Re:Oh My God! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean "From the TFA article", or maybe "from the friggin' TFA article"?
FYI information, this post is courtesy of Windows XP, based on NT technology, and transimtted using NIC card features to get the message posted as ASAP as possible.
just becuase I've nothing more to contribute (except that Tom's Hardware sucks)
Re:Oh My God! (Score:2)
*heh*
AER Redudancy [antinode.org] surrounds us.
Re:Oh My God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh My God! (Score:5, Funny)
John Dvorak, is that you?
Re:Oh My God! (Score:1)
anandtech test (Score:4, Informative)
Re:anandtech test (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny. In my own independent testing, the Windows USB driver provides about a 30% gain in battery life using Linux as my baseline.
Re:anandtech test (Score:3, Informative)
This is good news (Score:4, Insightful)
At least we know someones QA is still working.. ( and that wouldnt be microsoft in this case )
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is good news (Score:2)
It existed already for other Intel processors, it was made more pronounced by the new hardware.
What's the QA for your post?
Re:This is good news (Score:2)
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
Why wasn't there a pitchfork party over it 6 months ago, then?
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
Everybody's saying 6 months is unreasonable, so no, I don't buy that. I think nobody noticed until the CoreDuo came out. But gee golly gosh, it doesn't sound so bad that way.
"You'd have been the first to bust out your fork for this very reason if anyone had
dared to criticize them 6 months ago."
Assuming you're still as unreasonable 6 months ago as you're being now, probably yes.
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
Okay so... we waited 6 months to give them time to fix it, but now we're bitching that it took 6 months, even though nobody noticed until the recent CPU release.
"Gee golly gosh? Good on you hillbilly, you just made yourself sound like a bigger moron."
Wow did that backfire on you. Ha!
"Your second mistake is to make an assumption with no reasons or facts to back it up,
effectively becoming as "unreasonable" as you had thought I was
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
They knew about the problem even if not many others noticed."
I wish they did fix it. But if nobody's noticing, how do you prioritize that against the stupid ass security bugs in Windows?
"I don't follow your logic."
Figures. I'll give you a hint: You misread that.
"Umm no. Moron."
Mmm hmmm.
"Oh wow are you serious? Are the black helicopters in sharp focus too, hillbilly?"
Hehehe. Chicken.
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
Re:This is good news (Score:2)
That's what code reviews are for. A good code review can often (not always) find problems before they show up at runtime. Several years ago, I was doing a code walkthrough (less rigorous than a review) for a new feature that required the brand spanking new IE 4 to work. The code was written to look for the literal string "MSIE 4" in the User-Agent header; when IE 5 came out, the code would have failed to detect it. This was QA for non-existent products. The engi
Re:This is good news (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, code reviews only pick up the reasonably obvious problems - your example was an obvious problem that could be spotted a mile off. Code reviews generally don't tend to pick up problems in intricate algorithms.
Infact, looking at the user agent string _at all_ is a bug, nomatter what string you're looking for. It is the reason that browsers have to fake their UA strings (IE claims to be Mozilla, Opera often claims to be IE, etc) - if you check UA strings then you have to update the site every time a new browser is released. On the other hand, presumably your UA test was to serve up some specific code needed to work around browser bugs - that makes detecting a later version of the browser and serving up the same code to be an invalid thing to do since that later version which hasn't yet been released may not have the same bugs so you're suddenly serving up workarounds that aren't needed and may potentially break.
That said, as other people pointed out, whilest MS didn't originally spot this bug (whcih may or may not be a problem with their QA procedures), they _did_ spot it over 6 months ago and didn't bother to fix it - that's the bigger problem. I wouldn't complain too much since under existing hardware this didn't affect people much - the real problem is that they also take this attitude with security bugs, and that's more worrying (only fix the bug when it has public attention... usually coz it's being exploited in the wild)
Re:This is good news (Score:1)
Aside from that, I'm also going to guess that an operating system is a wee bit more complicated than a webapp you reviewed.
Not QA. (Score:2)
It was present in the Pentium M as well. So I would say it's their PR dept that's been working fine, not their QA dept.
Re:Not QA. (Score:2)
Actually, since they're getting bad PR now, but dozens of Random Q Slashdotters are saying that "tells me their QA was fine.", it means their shills are working hard, not that their PR department's working fine...
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Good news for whom?
I agree that it's certainly good for people unfortunate enough to use Microsoft's operating systems - they'll be able to fix a problem with a software patch rather then a hardware patch.
However, it's certainly not good news for microsoft - the small amount of trust that people have left in MS's QA processes will be lost in the news that they found this bug over six months ago,
Re:This is good news (Score:2)
Re:It's friggin WINDOWS running on friggin INTEL! (Score:2)
*shyly raises hand*
Re:It's friggin WINDOWS running on friggin INTEL! (Score:1)
Tom's was wrong (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=26
Re:Tom's was wrong (Score:1, Informative)
Where's the new logo ? (Score:5, Funny)
Get with the times Slashdot.
Perish the thought... (Score:1)
We can ask Redmond to fix the security vulnerabilities, we can ask Redmond to bring back the Teletubbie Hill with Vista, or we can ask them to fix various USB-related and ACPI power issues. Choose 1.
Don't be picky.
Re:Perish the thought... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Perish the thought... (Score:1)
BIOS Fix? (Score:4, Insightful)
What! Microsift to patch the BIOS
Not on my notebook
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
But this becomes useless if the old boot-floppy method gets removed as a result, what if you have another os installed? Or you need the bios update before windows will run?
Bios updates should be useable from multiple types of bootable media, cd, usb, floppy etc...
Or the bios itself should have an update function, whereby it can read a FAT or iso9660 filesystem from USB, floppy, CD or HD and open the appropriate update program... DEC's AlphaBios did this very nicely, and giving someone
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Microsoft can easily patch their own friggin' registry monstrosity.
Patching the BIOS of the machine is an outrageously bad suggestion, and a bad precedent.
How long before MS patches everyone's BIOS into oblivion or DRM hell?
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2, Informative)
But if it is not really a driver bug, as the BIOS statement would indicate, why on earth would MS cover for anybody?
It does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:1)
Re:BIOS Fix? (Score:2)
Try parsing that this way: "and is working on a new fix that could require a BIOS update patch from the vendor".
What! Microsift to patch the BIOS
Not on my notebook
You and Bill need to have a sit-down about whose notebook that is. See section 23.4.2 of the XP EULA.
So predictable. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So predictable. (Score:2)
Re:So predictable. (Score:2)
Re:So predictable. (Score:2)
Re:So predictable. (Score:2)
The problem cropped up on Windows machines, why would anyone fault Apple or Linux in this case?
power sapping bug (Score:5, Funny)
[Starscream holds a press conference]
Ummmm, yes... we were hoping no one would notice, but it's the fricking Insecticons gathering Energon for Megatron... Again. Microsoft only got involved because they own the North American rights to all acts of evil.
It's not just Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not just Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
The realy problem here is with technique - jabbing is never recommended. You want to firmly grasp the peripheral near its end, then gently slide it into the port. Okay, try that a few times - firm grasp - good! - and gennnntly slide it in. Now withdraw the device, and gennnntly reinsert. In and out, in and out, over and over and over again. Excellent, now you're getting the hang of it.
Although it's sometimes normal to encounter resistance inserting a peripheral into a brand-new port, this friction should disappear with use. Be extra-gentle in these circumstances, and resist the urge to just jab a device into the slot. Again, slow and easy, gently sliding in and out. Yes...yessssss! Getting frustrated and randomly jabbing with your peripheral is unlikely to result in a successful connection, and can damage your peripheral unit or the slot. Overly forceful insertions have even caused the tip of a device to snap clean off - don't let this happen to you!
Deep sleep is a separate issue. It's normal not to sleep immediately after a peripheral is inserted - the unit is in active use, and sleeping would be undesirable. Wait until interactions with the device have ceased before entering sleep.
Hopefully this has cleared up some of your concerns. Remember that hot-plugging is a perfectly normal activity, one which anyone can learn to enjoy with a little practice.
All a bunch of whiners.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the fix... (Score:2, Informative)
Make sure to back up the registry before you modify it. Make sure that you know how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up, restore, and modify the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
256986 (https://premier.microsoft.com/kb/256986/ [microsoft.com] [microsoft.com]) Description of the Microsoft Windows registry
SYMPTOMS
Consider the following
Re:Here's the fix... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here's the fix... (Score:2)
I thought it seemed suspicious that the functionality was there and easily enabled with a registry setting, but disabled by default. The feature was obviously found to be buggy by Microsoft's QA and deliberately disabled for the release. I guess they figured that it was better to let the USB suck power than to have it fail on wakeup.
Re:Here's the fix... (Score:1)
From TFA:
"Unfortunately, the solution isn't completely ready for public deployment, as there are apparently still some scenarios where it doesn't fix the problem. There may be issues with the problem re-appearing after putting your system to sleep, which are presently being worked on. However, for the majority of situations, this simple registry modification should, in theory, take care of things. "
:
:
"The problem is that the fix is
Special sleep states (Score:2, Insightful)
*deep and sinister buzzing sounds comming from the harddrive*
But seriously - if there's one thing I really miss, now that i've been using 99% linux for over 1½ year, it's proper power management features. I've tried a few distros and none of them delivered 100% working power management, such as standby.
I did, however, manage to get hibernation up and running, but apparently the docs on softwaresuspend aren't perfect, and I did manage to be a
Re:Special sleep states (Score:2)
Re:Special sleep states (Score:2)
Linux implements ACPI according to Intel's specs, while most hardware manufacturers implement it according to what works with microsoft's broken and undocumented implementation.
APM works really well on my Thinkpad T42, even hibernation to disk works perfectly (and it uses the bios, not the os, software suspend is very flakey) with one caveat, you have to change to a text or framebuffer console before you hibernate (if you hibernate from X11 it sometim
Tom's hardware, not what it used to be (Score:2)
Re:Tom's hardware, not what it used to be (Score:1)
A real hardware site would cover more than custom expensive PCs.
Like what of servers? rackmountables? cheaper desktops for poorer people? benchmarks of things that aren't games or synthetic? etc...
All those require them to have two bits of knowledge between the staff.
Tom
Sorry, have to do it... can't resist... (Score:2)
Thanks, I'll be here next week! (Score:1)
-Who's there?
-Zonk.
-Zonk who ?
-Zonk the guy who has breaking news about the Intel Core Duo
-Zonk the guy who's always 2 weeks behind CowboyNeal ?
-*grunt* Yes, THAT Zonk.
-Well in that case why don't you fark right off mate!
Re:So... (Score:2)