Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft has confirmed the battery draining bug that affects laptops with the Intel Core Duo chipset and processor. Tom Krazit has the details at CNET:

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a flaw in its USB 2.0 drivers for Windows XP Service Pack 2 that can cause a notebook to consume power at a faster-than-expected rate when using a peripheral device.
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Microsoft published a Knowledge Base article on the subject in July 2005, but made that information available only to PC vendors and partners, a company representative said in a statement. The software maker is not releasing the article to the public, but a copy was posted on Slashdot that industry sources have confirmed was the original article.
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In the private Knowledge Base article, Microsoft outlined a fix that involved modifying the registry key for USB 2.0. However, since then the company has realized that this is an impractical fix for most users, and is working on a new fix that could involve a BIOS update patch, a company representative said in a statement.

Intel is also working on a fix. It’s not known how widespread the problem is - other Intel and AMD processors may also be impacted.