Wallpaper killed my battery?

Z

ziomatrixacs

Registered
Well, I was out youtubin' and stumbled on to a link to www.matix-xp.com. Its a parody of the matrix if it were ran on a pc. I thought it was funny, so I downloaded the pretty matrix code wall paper with the big fat ERROR Please restart this matrix sign on it. Well, I close my ibook.. wait a half hour, open it up and the battery drops from 1:15 to just 0:50 in about 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes and im running 0:25. I get up to grab a cup of water, less than 5 minutes later my ibook is saying 0:01 RUNNING ON RESERVE BATTERY.
My computer did not get hot, but i did notice my CPU usage was in the upper 80-99% range and bouncing back and forth. It drained it so low, my computer went to sleep and wouldnt wake up. I had to plug it in to safely shut it down. I turned it on again, and it said 5:40 to charge my battery! and my CPU was still at 80-99%. I deleted that wallpaper and changed it to another and my battery recharge indicator dropped to 2:10ish! now it is charging just fine and is running smooth.
Usually I get a good 4:30 to 4:45 on my computer, and I was working fine up until I downloaded that WP. Im not sure if this is some weird infinite loop program or just a really big WP that uses alot of memory or something.. but it caused my ibook some issues! if anyone could shed some light, that wwould be great
 
You say your CPU was in the 80-99% range. Did you see which programs were using all that CPU time? You can see by going into /Applications/Utilities and opening Activity Monitor.
 
You should have taken the red pill. . . .

Anyways, you may, after all of this, consider re-setting your battery by letting it run to "empty" then powering it all the way to full.

--J.D.
 
If the CPU's running at 90% constantly, it very *CLEARLY* isn't the battery's fault, but a rogue task's. Either simply restart the computer (which essentially kills the rogue task, anyway) or go to Activity Monitor as suggested by Mikuro. The process using 80-100% of your CPU can probably be killed via Cmd-Opt-"q".
 
Well, I looked under iStat and it said it was something like aExtActivty or something similar to that. It only happened with the wallpaper installed though.. and I have never seen that program running before. Usually my cpu is in the 30-50% range according to iStat.

I agree with Fryke, perhaps that WP was real large and using alot of ram..but that isnt directly related to the CPU usage. I know when you set your back ground to change, it drains your battery a little bit more. I usually run my computer off of the power adapter and keep the battery topped off. I usually run it down to 2 hours every 3-4 days maybe, but I have never hit the low power indicator doing my usual routine. The only unusual thing I did was change my wallpaper. Here are my power stats after I restarted the computer, deleted the WP and left it asleep over night.

System Power Settings:

AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 13
Dynamic Power Step: No
Reduce Processor Speed: No
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: Yes
Wake On Modem Ring: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 15
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 5
Dynamic Power Step: No
Reduce Processor Speed: Yes
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On Modem Ring: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Reduce Brightness: No

Battery Information:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4231
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4228
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12540
Cycle Count: 173

AC Charger Information:

AC Charger (Watts): 50
Connected: Yes
Charging: No

Hardware Configuration:

Clamshell Closed: No
UPS Installed: No
 
It's not a large wallpaper at all, in fact -- but it is in BMP format. Try converting it to a JPEG image, setting the new JPEG image as your background, and see if that helps.
 
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