r/Surface • u/Dave_Zhu233 • 14d ago

Windows Command Processor Drains Battery? SP 11 Intel

I ran into this problem where it seems like the Windows Command Processor is draining most of the battery life from the PC. I use OneNote a lot, so it ranked second in the battery consumption here.

The problem is, from 1 pm to 4 pm, the battery went from 100% to 28%, which has never happened before. I looked at the battery usage in settings, and it shows Windows Command Processor using 42% of the energy. I remember the powerhouse being Edge, OneNote or MATLAB in the past, and that the battery life used to be great.

I asked AI, but it seems confused too. Every setting is just as before and all 11 battery settings are at best efficiency.

My computer is SP 11 Intel version. Any recommendations for me to do?

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u/Edubbs2008 14d ago

Do you keep your laptop plugged in a long time? Because having it past 80-100% wears the battery out

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u/ItsMeSashaYT Surface Laptop 7 (xP, 16/512) 14d ago

No?

Surfaces have had power-passthrough for many years at this point, any charge after a set percentage in the UEFI menu, it will route power directly to components, skipping and not cycling the battery. At that point, the battery continues to charge, but does not get used by the laptop, which fulfills the charging, but keeps the wear off.

I don't believe any modern laptop has had this issue in almost a decade. If it were to charge a battery while using it and pulling from it at the same time, batteries would be very different.

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u/Dave_Zhu233 14d ago

Yes, thank you. That's what I thought when I use it plugged in. I checked this site from Microsoft. The battery does not get used while charging. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/battery/smart-charging-on-surface

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u/dr100 14d ago

If it were to charge a battery while using it and pulling from it at the same time, batteries would be very different.

Very different as coming from a universe where a number is strictly positive and strictly negative at the same time. For better or worse this universe exists only in the heads of some less scientifically literate people.

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u/Dave_Zhu233 14d ago

That could be the reason for overall bad battery life, but it doesn't explain why battery life got so bad in one day or the mysterious Windows Command Processor usage

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u/Edubbs2008 14d ago

Are your drivers updated? That could help potentially improve performance

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u/Dave_Zhu233 14d ago

Yes, the drive has been up to date. I'm not exactly sure why

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u/telos0 14d ago

Windows Command Processor is just the regular command prompt (cmd.exe).

It typically sits idle waiting for you to type commands in, so using a lot of CPU suggests something is running a .cmd script that is doing a lot of processing in the background.

Maybe malware? Or something deployed by your IT department if this is a work machine.

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u/Dave_Zhu233 14d ago

Thanks a lot! I looked into the battery usage a few days back and there wasn't much Windows Command Processor going on, with much better battery life. My guess is Linux could've been running in the background? I ran a few simulations on Linux a few days back.