are all Surface books as unreliable as mine?

[lewinr]

I bought a Surface Book (i5 with no GPU, plus surface dock) a few weeks ago and of course got all updates from MS Update. Nothing much installed except Office 2013, Lync, Firefox, Skype, Lync and a few other misc apps.

But I have crashes almost every 2-3 hours.. Outlook shuts down, the unit goes to sleep and does not wake up, BSOD ("bad pool header") a few times a week, etc. It was much worse before the latest round of updates from MS, but still it makes me crazy that I'm sitting writing an email in Outlook and it just dies.

Does everybody have so many problems? Or is it possible that I just got a bad unit? I suspected bad RAM but I ran the windows memory diagnostics and didnt find any problems.

I'm traveling for the next couple of months outside the US and it will be not easy for me to send the unit for service. (Of course I bought it the day I left and even didnt power it up until I got on the airplane...) I'm kinda hoping that everybody has so many problems so I can just wait for MS to release more updates and fixes. But I really wonder if they could release the product if it is so buggy... and worried that I got a bad unit and will need to suffer for a few months until I'm able to get it replaced....

 

[xandros9]

Or is it possible that I just got a bad unit?

Ding ding ding!

Even a couple of those issues by themselves is cause for alarm.

 

[tdf2001]

Same here. Aside from the well known sleep/resume issues, the system does BSOD every other day and simply freezes at times + the dock is not fully backed yet either.

In part, I believe, it comes down to the newness of the Skylake processor and its new chipset along with Windows 10. I decided to keep the Surface book despite all the issues. I wish Microsoft would handle this transparently and not be silent on the topic.

 

[Turbo Brian]

ive had my i7/512GB/16GB for almost a week. picked it up last thursday. it went back for exchange last night. first few days were good. yesterday it started to go down hill, quickly. started with apps crashing. then the bsods. bad pool header was one, like you. i had a few others including some memory something or others. eventually got to the point that it would bsod at boot and i couldnt get back to windows. tried a reset. it failed part way through. tried a win10 usb stick i made for another device with the nov update already wrapped up, it too failed. tried a surface image from microsoft and it too failed. eventually, all it would do is power on straight to the bios if no usb drive was attached. i suspect either RAM or SSD issues. anyways, exchanged last night and granted, ive not used it much thus far, but no issues yet.

so yeah, if you are having serious stability issues, might be worth an exchange. bonus? the new one has more uniform keypad backlighting and the first one had a super tiny nick on the bezel and this new one is perfect all around. hope it keeps running well.

 

[Micropel]

I find this intriguing I haven't had these issues except one BSOD which was fixed with going into the device manager and doing a driver force to previous drivers for the Nvidia and the integrated intel card we have available in the OS. Also Going in to the registry and Services.msc and disabling un-needed processes. I have the i7/256GB SSD/8GB RAM/dGPU. This issue isn't the hardware its driver support to the software which would be more Intel, Nvidia, Samsung issues.

 

[zerospace-net]

My SB has been interesting as of late. It started off perfect (got mine on launch day -- i5/256/dGPU). Few, if any, BSODs. I think I had 2-3 before the Nov update (video scheduler, one strange internal power error, and another related to the nvidia driver). Yesterday, my SB was possessed by demons or something. It BSOD'd 3 times in about 4 hours and was horribly unstable (firefox kept crashing, which is odd). 2 kernel security checks (one caused by explorer.exe and the other by dwm.exe), and one system service exception (also dwm.exe). I was docked (not using Surface Dock, but a 3rd party USB3 to ethernet adapter and the SB's own mini-displayport jack) to an external monitor at the time, so I thought it might have been one of my peripherals misbehaving. After undocking and running every diagnostic I could think of and came up with no errors or issues, I left the system undocked the rest of they day, and it was stable and smooth -- like usual. Played games, surfed the web, read news, etc. All without issue. I checked all my USB plugs this morning when docking again, and thus far... *knock on wood* no BSODs.

This has kind of been my experience with the SB overall. Most of the time, it's great, but when it screws up, it does so in nearly epic (but recoverable) fashion. Ahh, Windows 10 & Surface Book. I love you and hate you all at the same time!

 

[mcf517]

I would say that you most likely have a bad unit. I used to have a BSOD every time I detached the screen. They replaced my unit and after the updates, I've been able to use it without worrying about major work-stopping issues. I still deal with battery drain when sleeping, multi-display detection issues, and, less often, wake from sleep problems, which seem to be driver/software/OS issues. I'm running the i5 256gb with dgpu.

 

[ytrewq]

Mine has been very reliable since the updates.

 

[LewsTherin05]

I would say that you most likely have a bad unit.

I would tend to agree unfortunately. My original unit (i5/256/dgpu) would BSOD several times a day after the the 12/2 update.
I finally gave up and exchanged it at Best Buy. The replacement hasn't BSOD'ed once and I've used it several hours a day for 2+ weeks.

 

[Hardcore1973]

I had issues with my DGPU version when it first came out but switched it for the a i5/128/8 base model and have had no issues after all the updates. Love it!

 

[WillysJeepMan]

Ding ding ding!

Even a couple of those issues by themselves is cause for alarm.

Doesn't seem to be isolated....

Microsoft seems to be acknowledging that there are issues.
Microsoft owns up to issues with the Surface Book and Pro 4

 

[Lethal_NFS]

I have the $1500 model and I have yet to have a single crash. Had the laptop for about 3 weeks now.

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

I have virtually no issues with my Surface Book. The only issue I get on occasion are keyboard issues that are easily fixed by detaching the screen and reattaching it or rebooting.

 

[Dush Ku]

Definitely an unusual problem. Get an exchange. I have none of those issues.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

I have the exact same configuration and the problems I have are driving me crazy. I'm trying so hard to stay with the surface book but it's hard not to just want to return it.

 

[orlbuckeye]

I don't have that issue. I would take it to a Microsoft store if there is one near you.

 

[jmerrey]

Exchange it!

 

[StevePT]

There's going to be a glut of Refurbished Surface Books pretty soon.

 

[zerospace-net]

There's going to be a glut of Refurbished Surface Books pretty soon.

Not likely. They use refurbs to replace malfunctioning units sent in for repair/replacement . I'll bet you don't see refurb Surface Books for sale anywhere for awhile because of that.

 

[lewinr]

Thanks everybody for your comments.

It looks like I will have no chance to return the unit within the 30 day grace period as I wont be back in the country before then. I hope it doesn't mean that I need to send it in for "repair" for weeks and be without a notebook for that time...

It is worrying to see the comments like "I dont have problems like BSOD or crashes, only once in a while it doesnt wake up and I need to detach and re-attach the screen to fix it...", etc. I have those problems also and it is extremely frustrating on top of the crashes. It means those problems are endemic and I really expected better from something at the surface book's price point. MS needs to realize there's a difference between shipping buggy v1.0 software that can be fixed by patches and shipping buggy v1.0 hardware which requires people to start shipping units back to them for replacement...