Poor battery life

snus

Reputable
May 12, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hi,
I have a HP ProBook 4540s laptop with Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM. The laptop has two graphic cards: AMD Radeon Hybrid and Intel HD Graphics 4000. I am running Windows 8.1.
My battery life is quite poor, it never lasts more than 2 hours (that is while surfing the internet or working in Microsoft Office) although it should last at least 4 hours. I really need my battery to last longer, so I need some advice on what to do to achieve this (I am not an expert in computers so please simplify it a little).
I also noticed that in Device Manager next to AMD Radeon Hybrid it says blocked. What does this mean and what should I do?

Thank you for your help
 
Check the Radeon app manager and see what is alloctaed to the AMD card and switch it to the Intel GPU as it use less power.

Adjust the power profiles to reduce the speed of your cpu, spin down drives quicker, lots of things to adjust to extend battery life.

As for the blocked AMD, this is a common fault with HP's + Win8.1 + dual Intel/AMD GPU's.
Solution is to uninstall the AMD drivers, delete hardware from device manager.
Install latest Intel GPU drivers.
Install latest AMD drivers, even if its is Beta.

HP's advice, is to go back to Win8, until they can be arsed to sort out Win8.1 driver issues !
 

snus

Reputable
May 12, 2014
2
0
4,510
What do you mean by Radeon app manager?
I have tried AMD Catalyst Control Center and changed a few things to Based on power source and the battery life improved right away but then began another problem. When i closed the lid of the laptop it went to sleep and when I opened it and wanted to wake it up by clicking the mouse, for some reason the computer restarted (which lasted a very long time). The computer settings about what should the computer do when you close the lid, were always switched on sleep, so that wasn't the problem. I restored the system to a day before so now I don't have that problem anymore.
Is it safe to allocate everything to Intel or is it better to leave some things allocated to AMD Radeon?
Thanks