I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Hi,
I have a power vampire inside my N800!

This already happened several times: I close all apps and leave my N800 inside its case (turned on), fully charged. In 5 or 6 hours, it begins to beep because the battery is empty! I also realize that the N800 is a bit warm in the back. Today it happened again, and I realized that the memory usage had one extra line. But I found nothing with 'top' that could be responsible of this... but perhaps I missed something.

This does not happen always, perhaps 10% of the times I use it.

Have you experienced this? Any idea what is happening?

Thanks!
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

metalayer-crawler ? Look for this on forum and you will see several solutions.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Nope, I've already deactivated the metalayer-crawler with

mv /usr/bin/metalayer-crawler /usr/bin/metalayer-crawler.deactivated
update-rc.d metalayer-crawler remove

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Do you have any home screen apps running? If so, try disabling them.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Sorry, but what is a "home screen"? I suppose I don't have them... :)

May the OMWeather applet drain the battery?

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Home screen is where things like OMWeather live. Try disabling all of them (including weather) to see if that's the problem. With no windows open, select the 'home' menu, 'select applets,' and disable everything. If that solves the problem, try turning them on one at a time to find the trouble maker.

For OMWeather, check at least that you're not trying to update too frequently.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

The only applets I have are the clock and the OMWeather. And I had OMWeather to update every 2 hours. Strange thing was that it was an intermittent problem. Actually, I disabled it completely. I don't need it since I am most of the time near a computer.

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Do you have modest (e-mail) set up? In the space of te 5 hours did you receive any mail? If not then that it what is causing your drain. I have discovered that occasionally when modest goes nuts it will add one bar to your memory monitor.

In my case I am considering using claws mail instead, but I had to do a reflash on friday so I'm seeing if this that addresses the issue.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

No, I use mutt as email client, with no new email warning software (although I do have everything setup, I have it disabled; I enable it only when travelling).

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

My power problem persists. Without reason, my N800 sometimes (once every 10 days or so) looses its power and die in a few hours, like if the screen keeps on or something like that.

I suspect that some program keeps running, but 'top' says nothing special. I use no mail application, nor any music player or database. I have disabled all the home applets, and the problem persists...

No one experiencing something like this?

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Yes, I've been having exactly the same problem lately. Like you, I am not using modest and I don't have any music or videos on the machine. I also see nothing via top and have disabled metalayer-crawler.

I also keep wifi and bluetooth off accept when I am using the browser.

This is driving me crazy.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Are you using a memory card at all? If so try it without the card, and if that fixes the problem try other brands of card. (I will be avoiding A-data for at least the foreseeable future)

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Yes, I use a 16 GB Markvision Class 6 card. It would me more practical for me to turn the device off than to remove the card, though.

What is really strange is the fact that this problem is intermittent (this would mean it is not the card?). Most days everything works just fine, and suddenly another day the battery gets exhausted in a few hours of standby.

Perhaps the battery indicator is inaccurate?

Thanks for the info,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Have you tried to see what processes are running when the battery drain happens? May be one of them uses the CPU excessively and thus results in a heavy battery consumption...

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Yes, this is what I suspect also. I looked several times at 'top' output when I think battery is being drained, but I found nothing.

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I had a problem with an N800. The internal charger was slowly going bad. Sometimes it charged sometimes it did not. It finally stopped charging complety. I use a desk charger now to charge my battery.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I removed advanced backlight a few days ago and haven't had a battery problem since. Can't actually say that was the answer since my battery problems have always been intermittent, but so far so good.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

The only problem I had like this, was like davidgro said, with a 4 GB A-data sd card sucking too much power.

There is a cmd line tool, battery-status you can install that will log battery level at regular intervals. It might help you determine if the battery drains at a regular rate or all of a sudden.

I use advanced backlight on my n800 all the time, and I have had no battery problems with it. You don't have it set to allow zero backlight?

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

hey guys,


i wanted to jump in here to see if anyone might have suggestions for me as well (didnt wana start a new thread) but exactly how long of a charge do you guys get on a daily basis, i see that if i fully charge it and use it a bit then place it in flight mode with the screen off, it will a about two days. and with wifi on it may last a day in standby mode, but if i'm on it intermittently all day using internet radio and checking my e-mail, while im'ing it last about 2-3 hrs, is that any reason to worry or get an extended battery... also is it possible to over charge the tablet, like if i forget and leave it plugged while i'm at work or the gym..

Thanks,

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

My battery lasts about 5 hours of intermittant use. I keep another battery in an external charger which charges a dead battery in about 5 hours. Therefore, by the time my N800 goes dead my backup batterynhas a full charge.

I think I got it!
 

I think I know what is happening with my N800.

Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw my N800 with the screen on!!! Yep, I left it off.

What can be turning my screen on??

Thanks,
L.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

1. lock your doors and windows , vampires roam at night.
2. read through the below manual completely.
http://www.ehow.com/how_6886_kill-vampire.html

3. once the above steps are completed, you will be well prepared. now, unmount, do a file systemcheck.better still a full format and a fresh install, carefully installing apps.

4. this will regenerate fresh blood to keep the vampires happy.
5. gift them with many sd cards. they love them.
6.make friends with them and be at peace.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Understood. Everything seems quite reasonable, except the silver bullet stuff. They don't sell those in supermarkets here, this is not the US!

Thanks anyway,
L.

Re: I think I got it!
 

Had that problem. Had to reflash.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I am having the same problem with my N800. I have a fully charged battery and just a few hours or so later it is getting close to fully drained. this has just started a week ago. I've read through this thread and tried a few things. I just reflashed last night and it is still doing it. I have 3 batteries and they all do it, so it is not just the battery.
I am running "top" and don't see anything excessive running. I do use the modest email client, but have never had a problem before. After reflashing I thought that would solve the modest problem if there were any.
One Thought: I recently(three weeks ago)bought a cheap external charger from Hong Kong. Do you think that it is killing all my batteries. In a different thread everyone seemed to think that would not be a problem with the chargers.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I need some help. I Leave for a trip tomorrow.

Bump

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

i did find that my chinese charger can't charge my bats. up to the level the tablet charges them. but if you see the battery level indicated as '10days/7hrs' (do you?) that shoulld not be the cause.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I'll take a look next time I put a fresh battery in. Thanks

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

yes when I charged the battery up it does say '10days/7hrs'. I started using the NIT and within 10 minutes battery level said '9days/3hrs". So either my battery(s) is going bad or something is sucking the charge out of it. any suggestions?

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

recently, I decided to clone the flash memory of my N800 to the internal card.

I created an ext3+swap partition, and I was obliged to remove easy debian 's image in order to free space.

What surprised me, is that battery life is much higher now, it's about 2 times (on idle). but sometimes, it feels that its getting empty faster ...

I'm not sure what caused the problem, but at some point,(before the cloning) I was so upset I removed all of the desktop widgets, and most of tray apps.

I would suggest, that if you have easy debian, try to disable it or rename the image.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

have you tried different memory cards? they do cause problems sometimes.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

Just wanted to throw this out there.

My N800 started draing quickly. I rebooted several times, enabled/disabled status barr / desktop applets to no avail. I run off of a cloned partition on my internal card. I finally booted to flash and fsck my cloned partition. Several errors were found and fixed. Rebooted and the mysterious drain had stopped. Started again several weeks later, fsck'd the cloned partition rebooted and all has been well ever since.

Don't know why this would work but it seems to have in my case.

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

I'm using the same card I have had for over a year now. Would the card effect it now just in the last 2 weeks?

My card is not partitioned. All my OS is on the built in flash. Wouldn't refashing fix everything?

Re: I've a vampire inside my N800!
 

May I point you to this post?

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=114

It may not be your case, but you never know...