Microsoft power drain bug fix may only benefit Core Duo notebooks

Redmond (WA) - Microsoft quietly released a patch for a power drain bug Tom's Hardware Guide had uncovered earlier this year. The fix promises to increase the battery life notebooks - especially and perhaps only if they are equipped with Intel's Core Duo processors.

It took Microsoft more than four month to come up with a patch that resolves a serious power drain issue in notebooks, if they are connected to USB 2.0 devices. The good news, however, is that the bugfix actually has been available for download since late Tuesday and users who may have been experiencing unusually high power consumption of their notebooks can finally take advantage of the full battery life of their notebooks.

One reason for this circumstance is that "the USB code and power management code in Windows XP were designed for earlier generations of hardware and engineering robust solutions to work with all current new hardware as well as full backwards compatibility is difficult," Microsoft said.

The fix is already of a follow-up test in Tom's Hardware Guide's labs. We will publish the results as soon as they are available. Technical detail surrounding the stories can be found in our stories Microsoft driver bug saps Core Duo power and Microsoft to release patch for power drain bug.

The patch for the power drain bug can be downloaded from Microsoft's website.

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