Over the past week we have seen a little bit of blogosphere activity regarding Windows 7 and batteries, specifically the new Windows 7 message “Considering replacing your battery”. Since this is related to the engineering of Windows 7 we’re going to use this blog to provide an update to people. As we have talk about many times, we have a relentless focus on the quality of Windows 7 and we take seriously any reports we receive that indicate a potential problem that could result in a significant failure of the OS. In a previous post we talked about the steps we take when we receive a bug report, in particular when we start to see several reports that appear to be the same. For the past week or so we have been diligently working through these steps and more to see if there is anything in Windows 7 we need to address regarding this issue. At this time we have no reason to believe there is any issue related to Windows 7 in this context.

Several press articles this past week have drawn attention to blog and forum postings by users claiming Windows 7 is warning them to “consider replacing your battery” in systems which appeared to be operating satisfactorily before upgrading to Windows 7. These articles described posts in the support forums indicating that Windows 7 is not just warning users of failing batteries – as we designed Windows 7 to do this – but also implying Windows 7 is falsely reporting this situation or even worse, causing these batteries to fail. To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.

Using all the tools at our disposal including contacting customers reporting this issue on forums, customer service communications, partnerships with our PC makers, and of course the telemetry in Windows 7, we have been monitoring reports and discussions regarding this new feature, trying to separate reports of the designed behavior from those that might indicate an issue with Windows 7. In the latter cases we are trying to understand the scope of applicability and obtain hardware on which to reproduce a faulty behavior. To date all such steps indicate that we do have customers seeing reports of battery health issues and in all cases we have investigated Windows 7 has simply accurately detected a failing battery. Before I go into our status on this particular issue, we should review the details behind this new feature.

Read more at E7 Blog

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Microsoft Says Battery Issue Isn’t An Issue

In recent weeks some reports have been raised on the web in regards to issues with Windows 7 alerting users that their battery’s were in need of replacement when in fact they weren’t. The following message shows up on your laptop: “Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computermight shut down suddenly.”

Microsoft had acknowledged the issue and said they were working on a solution. They suspected the issue might be related to a problem with system firmware, or a computer’s BIOS. Well today, in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog , Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live Division announced that there was no battery-warning problem with Windows 7.

“To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state

“In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.

In his blog post, Sinofsky explains that Windows 7 has a new battery monitoring feature which notify s the user when a battery is performing at 40% or less. Windows 7 will then advise the user to replace their battery. It takes about one year for a battery to start noticeably degrading, and the customers who were getting the warning had systems older than 1.5 years, he said.

Microsoft has received 12 customer service incidents in addition to pulling 8 additional incidents from various forums. To date (for a total of 20 incidents), none of these have shown anything other than degraded batteries,

Have any of you experienced any of these battery issues? We published a possible work around here for this issue

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Yeah that might be the case with me too.. But its too early to degrade that much... My battery isnt an year old.... Strange stuff..And it was giving good back up before...

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