What can make a powered off laptop lose battery charge?

[TPMB12]

My small laptop is an 11" lenovo which has pretty much done this from new. It's out of warranty and this is getting worse. I use it on battery and it lasts an long time,  but charge it up before turning off it is dead 3n or 4 days later when I next use it. I turn it fully off using the power off option on the start button.  It's not like it's on sleep but shutdown. I even have the flip closed option as shutdown not sleep.

What could be the issue? Is there a setting that's causing it somehow. I've had it with last two laptops so it really could be something I've done.  Unlikely as I've not really changed many settings from when I first bought it.

[Afasoas]

I this a Windows laptop?

I suspect when you are shutting it down, you are not really shutting it down.
You might want to look at disabling fast startup:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fast-startup (..site best visited with an ad-blocker)

[Kim]

Barakta's $ork-2 laptop had an annoying habit of switching on and draining its battery when carried around in bags.

[TPMB12]

I this a Windows laptop?

I suspect when you are shutting it down, you are not really shutting it down.
You might want to look at disabling fast startup:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fast-startup (..site best visited with an ad-blocker)

It seems this could be the reason. I'll try it.

[ian]

This is how Hell is powered.

[T42]

So it's endothermic after all.

[The_Mikey]

Either the laptop is consuming the power or the battery itself is self discharging or a cell/cells are failing.

[hubner]

Is the battery built in or can it be removed? If the latter, take it out and see it goes flat by itself.

[TPMB12]

Although I was selecting start/power/power off option it seems it was still using power like if it had hibernated or gone into sleep. I turned off fast startup and it stayed at 94% after about 2 days when it went flat in less than 24 hours before.

Problem solved I believe.  Plus I don't need fast start with the ssd anyway.

[TPMB12]

Nope! It's not fixed.

[Afasoas]

Nope! It's not fixed.

Check the system uptime (it's displayed somewhere in task manager) the next time you boot it up and make sure it correlates with when you last turned it on.

If it's not hibernation, then the next port of call is to check through the BIOS settings and see whether anything is configured to wake the computer up (mouse/keyboard/USB/wake-on-lan). I doubt this would be the cause but it's worth checking before suspecting the hardware might be the issue.

The next step might be to take the battery out, charged. Leave it disconnected and see what the voltage drop across it is like over time. 

[fruitcake]

Good trouble-shooting tip from Afasoas above.

I once had a Windows Toshiba netbook that gradually drained its own battery. After buying a high capacity battery and finding the same issue, I read that those machines were capable of sniffing out wi-fi signal even when they were supposed to be powered off. They had Toshiba-written software running within Windows to toggle that setting; I may have made a mistake in neglecting to check that in Windows before wiping the HDD and installing a Linux OS which had no equivalent control. I cared less about that netbook when I got a spare laptop, and so I chose to transport it in a bike pannier which shook the cooling fan apart and the machine soon failed from overheating. Eventually I was able to give it away to someone who wanted the spare battery. So it all ended well.   

[DaveJ]

Does it have Always On USB?  Is that what is draining it?

[TPMB12]

Still having battery issues.  No hibernate option set up and I always turn it off fully. Takes a day off no useto drain. Annoying!

My other, larger laptop has a power drain too but less so, that is an older one with HDD not SSD drive, it also has an issue with network adaptor or something,  I got it and the WiFi went off after an hour one night. I find out you could reset the WiFi adaptor to get it working. Some days it had no issues others it did.  Eventually n it got i the stage i only got about 10 minutes of Internet connection before it went down.  No idea what

I'm seriously unlucky with laptops.

[fruitcake]

I thought these tips were good ones. Afasoas has wrangled many computers and knows his stuff.

[TPMB12]

Nope! It's not fixed.

Check the system uptime (it's displayed somewhere in task manager) the next time you boot it up and make sure it correlates with when you last turned it on.

If it's not hibernation, then the next port of call is to check through the BIOS settings and see whether anything is configured to wake the computer up (mouse/keyboard/USB/wake-on-lan). I doubt this would be the cause but it's worth checking before suspecting the hardware might be the issue.

The next step might be to take the battery out, charged. Leave it disconnected and see what the voltage drop across it is like over time. 

BIOS? What? What? Seriously you might have given me good advice but I really don't know how to use it. How do you even get into BIOS let alone what to do there? The idea of going into BIOS makes me think I might end up with a rectangular frisbee after the mess I cause!!   

Actually i did go into the BIOS of a work laptop once but straight back out again. Plus if I messed up there we had a very good outside guy who would fix it quickly except on Thursdays!

I wonder whether I should ask the question, how much should I expect a techie to charge to fix it?

[TPMB12]

uptime always starts on 0 btw. so nothing should be running in the background when i think it is all off.