"System" Process Question(s)

Even with a good battery (1 -years old, babied, never fully discharged, etc.), my Dell XPS 15 9510 no longer gets very good battery life. It could be a 24H2 vs. 23H2 thing, or something else. I don't see any rogue services or resource usage (although 24H2 does seem to use a little bit more RAM) but I have noticed a difference between my desktop machine (older) and laptop. The System process (ntoskrnl.exe) only uses like 0.2% CPU on my desktop. At idle, my laptop System process uses like 2 - 4%. I've read some people complain of their's using 25%+...so mine is definitely bad compared to that...but is there a way to see what background activities it is doing that needs that...I figure any reduction would help with both temps and battery life. Admittedly, the laptop comes with a lot of additional sensors and this may be normal. Just curious if there are any recommendations.

If you look in settings battery usage, you can see which apps are using the most power. Laptop batteries do age.

You could also run a battery report to see exactly how much capacity has been lost.


If you decide to get a new battery, make sure you get one from a reputable supplier. I have had problems with OEM battreries not charging properly.
I'm not saying you have to buy it from Dell, just be careful.

Yep...I've had mixed reactions with non-Dell batteries, at least on this model. I checked battery report and I'm still showing 0% wear (design capacity = full charge capacity). Looking at some of the other specs it seems to indicate that a full charge will last ~6.5 hours...definitely less than the 8+ hours I know I got at one point. Firefox is the only app I see as a notable drain. However, I don't have any extensions or other settings that would indicate this app was consuming that much energy. In task manager though...it is System process that is regularly showing as "very high power usage."

But 2% to 4% is not 'very high usage'?

Could be a Process Explorer utility.



In general, you need to check battery wear, reduce brightness, use 'Power saver' Power Plan, etc.

abactuon said:

Could be a Process Explorer utility.

View attachment 120760

In general, you need to check battery wear, reduce brightness, use 'Power saver' Power Plan, etc.

Click to expand...

I have had all of that enabled for some time now. Really minimal changes except Windows and driver updates. Only this laptop exhibits the behavior. Battery wear is good, brightness is low, Power plan is balanced, etc...I only focused on the System process because it was the only one periodically spiking and showing "very high energy usage" in Task Manager. I'll take a look at process explorer and see if it shows anything else.

kelper said:

But 2% to 4% is not 'very high usage'?

Click to expand...

I am inclined to agree except that Windows kept showing "very high energy usage" in Task Manager...everytime it would spike...as high as 8 - 9%. 2 - 4% seems to be the average. I even did a repair by reinstall of Windows and nothing changed.

More research today...it looks like I'm no the only one complaining about this. I found a few others who have posted in Microsoft forums...no fix but may be related to 24H2 bugs. I may wait and see if January update improves things....before deciding if trying a clean install might be worth it.

Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report ?

powercfg -energy -duration 30 -output E:\Temp\energy3.html

and

powercfg /batteryreport /output "E:\Temp\battery-report.html"