4-Year Old Battery Draining Bug Still Remains In Windows Version of Chrome 36

A bug has existed in the Windows version of Chrome for the past four years that progressively drains the battery inside a laptop due to irregular coding. Google has seemed to be made aware of this issue a number of times over this period, but the latest series of Chrome updates have failed to rectify the problem.

Ian Morris wrote about the issue in Forbes recently, which was then subsequently picked up by other news outlets over the past few days who sought to highlight the issue. As a result, Google has finally acknowledged the bug and intimated that they will look into resolving it. However, this didn't seem to happen until there was a firestorm of interest in the story.

What Is The Issue?

The issue resolves around how Chrome deals with open tabs that require a faster “system clock tick rate”. That is to say, the page needs to be updated and checking for changes. This rate is set at about 15ms to be acceptable, but when accessing a site like YouTube with much changing content, the browser boosts the updating to just 1ms.

This is quite correct, however Chrome differs because when an open tab with a high updating rate is closed down, the browser doesn't adjust the updating rate back down to the more standard 15ms range as do other web browsers like Opera or Firefox that do not have this problem.

Microsoft believes that with the Windows operating system, the difference between a clock speed rate of 15ms vs 1ms can use as much as 25% more battery power which can dramatically reduce the time a laptop can run on battery alone. Mac and Linux have a clock-less system and so are unaffected by the bug.

How To Fix The Issue?

The only way to fix the issue is to fully close down Chrome and then restart it. It is important to check that all aspects of the running Chrome are closed. This can be verified by bringing up the Windows task manager (using CTRL + ALT + Escape keys).

Bug Assigned

Due to the mounting pressure from news outlets and users discussing the issue which affects all laptop owners running Windows and Chrome, Google has finally after four years assigned an internal bug number to the problem so that it can be properly assessed and worked through.

Chrome 37 Beta

It is doubtful that the bug will be resolved in the next version of Chrome for Windows as Chrome 37 is already in the beta testing phase.