Is it possible to disabling battery charging?

NTDEV
1

Hi,

i would like to ask, whether it is possible to disable battery charging programatically by any API/Protocol Standard/Signal or somehow on a Windows system? I guess this is very likely left to the charging electronics build in into the manufacturers battery and/or mainboard. I dont want to do that anyway, just want to know if there is any kind of “interface” to accomplish that.

Thanks

K.

2

ACPI defines a method for it (see section 10 of the spec), but I don’t know
if anyone implements it or that Windows exposes it in any way.

It’s sort of a creepy thing to do, why would you want to disable charging on
the battery?

-scott
OSR
@OSRDrivers

wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…

Hi,

i would like to ask, whether it is possible to disable battery charging
programatically by any API/Protocol Standard/Signal or somehow on a Windows
system? I guess this is very likely left to the charging electronics build
in into the manufacturers battery and/or mainboard. I dont want to do that
anyway, just want to know if there is any kind of “interface” to accomplish
that.

Thanks

K.

3

Hi Scott,

it was just a question out of curiosity. I read somewhere on a dell or lenovo forum that there are tools from the vendors, able to disable battery charging by software.

Thanks for the reference. I found the info in the “10
Power Source and Power Meter Devices” section under “10.2 Control Method Batteries”. Its described in “10.2.2.11 _BMC (Battery Maintenance Control)”.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/articles/acpi-config-power-interface-spec.pdf

However there are odd solutions to this (i didnt check, nor confirmed) like disabling the “Microsoft ACPI-compliant control method battery” device in Device Manager that would stop the battery from charging. Read on comments here: http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/what-battery-manager-can-stop-charging-at-a-certain-percentage/

K.

4

> it was just a question out of curiosity. I read somewhere on a dell or lenovo forum that there are tools

from the vendors, able to disable battery charging by software.

At least for old Dell Latitude E6410, there is such a tool.

Newer Dell laptops use some smarter battery charge modes management tools, but probably you can disable charging there too.

–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Microsoft MVP on File System And Storage
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com