My Acer Aspire netbook is great. Originally shipped with a Linux distribution, I quickly installed Windows XP. Being slightly paranoid, I locked the hard disk requiring a password to boot up.
A few months ago, XP was replaced with Windows 7. Unusually, my laptop started running out of power without being used. Within weeks Windows7 started complaining about my laptop's battery, that it needed replacing.
When batteries reach 0% charge, they get damaged. I could not determine why my battery kept discharging with Windows 7. The event logs in Windows 7 didn't contain any information,
Eventually I realised that Windows 7 quite often boots a computer out of standby or hibernate, and having a hard disk password on boot, meant the computer was stuck requesting this password. This was discharging my battery to 0%.
A costly mistake having a hard disk password with Windows 7. Hope this post helps someone else.
