Since I updated my system (via automatic updates) I've seen a dramatic drop in battery life, as before the update I was averaging 8hrs of battery life, after updating my system my battery life went from 90% down to 19% in less than 3hrs!
The Jan firmware update has completely borked my surface pro 3 i5. It won't start up without me either force restart or holding the power button for 15 seconds and then again for 5. Windows hello with type cover 4 fails saying wrong username or password and locks me out. I got a message saying I needed to plug in my computer for a couple of hours one time after entering my PIN. Works fine with full password.
Holy hell, I need this for my business trip in 24h! What a disaster.
Quick update for anyone interested in a SP3 running Win 8.1. Used it for about 2 hours last night. Battery drain seemed better, but not a dramatic improvement - but I did not have time to take it all the way down. No problems with anything else. Machine is snappy, no issues connecting with Wifi or BT.
Monday I will test it at work with the Surface dock, and see if the USB signal drop issues have disappeared.
Did you try to do a refresh?The weird thing about the battery drain is that the Pro 3 is fine in sleep mode, consuming 3% of battery over a 9hr period, but when using the damn thing I squeezed ~4hrs of life out of the tablet (with battery saver on) and this was just using word, excel and edge. I really hope Microsoft release a patch ASAP!
You can use a USB with W10 on it to do a refresh.
Do a long press of power button and vol down. That should put your into the UEFI, then set it to boot off USB first. Then put in the USB, save settings and let it boot off the USB. Then you can do a refresh.