Original Surface RT Locking Up!

[infinidim]

My wife has the original Surface RT which she uses mostly for emailing people and using Facebook. She only uses the on-screen keyboard to do her typing. For the first 6 months of using her "original" Surface RT she had no issues at all but then the dreaded "lock-up" started.

She would be typing on the on-screen keyboard either into the Facebook app or a reasonably long email and the machine would "lock-up". You can't type anything but the Windows etched icon still gives feedback but does not take you back to the start screen. The only way to get out of this is to power down the machine and start it again - obviously you have lost either everything that you have typed - Facebook app or some of what you have typed - Mail app.

After doing a refresh Microsoft support agreed to replace the machine.

So with machine two we had it working for about a month or so and it started showing the same symptoms!! We did the refresh again and it worked for a while but yet again it started to lock-up.

We are about to get machine three as a replacement....yet again after a couple of months the machine started to show the same lock-up issues.

To me it looks like an interrupt issue that has not been addressed by Microsoft in the original Surface RT firmware - I say this because you still get feedback when you press the Windows etched icon at the bottom of the screen. It's as if the firmware is looping and only high interrupt activities respond. The other interesting thing about this issue is that just before it locks up the key sounds go silent as well.

Is this a known issue with the original Surface RT? Does anybody have a resolution?

Regards

Infinidim

 

[RajeevT]

No such issues here. Have you done a full reset yet or only a refresh each time?

 

[infinidim]

No such issues here. Have you done a full reset yet or only a refresh each time?

Have done a full reset.

Infinidim

 

[prlundberg]

I've had that happen before when my free disk space got below 5GB. But the main symptoms were just general slowness and lag, which doesn't sound quite like your problem. My other guess would be that it is one of your apps causing trouble.

To be honest, if I had that happen twice, I'd probably sell the new refurbished one in the box and upgrade to an S2 or something else all together.

 

[infinidim]

I've had that happen before when my free disk space got below 5GB. But the main symptoms were just general slowness and lag, which doesn't sound quite like your problem. My other guess would be that it is one of your apps causing trouble.

To be honest, if I had that happen twice, I'd probably sell the new refurbished one in the box and upgrade to an S2 or something else all together.

Thanks for your thoughts.

It wasn't disc space as we had 13 Gb free when it happened.

I have just spent the last 3 hours on the phone to Microsoft Surface support and they think it might be a corruption in the account. What we have done is create a new account, delete the old one off the machine, recreate the old one on the machine again and then delete the temporary account. What this will have done is flush all elements of the account that relate to the Surface RT, and hopefully address the lock-up issue.

Now we wait.....