Firmware Update Released! 2-17-16

[zerospace-net]

Back again.. I feel like it is safe to say that battery life is MUCH improved with this update. After my initial issues, things have settled down and the SB appears to be running smoothly & stable. I disabled hardware acceleration in Firefox and my video driver related issues there have gone as a result. I'll probably try a couple more reboots and re-enable hardware acceleration and see if that issue persists.

I'll know just how stable this thing really is after the weekend -- when I'll likely put it through some long gaming sessions. Things like the keyboard/trackpad stop working sometimes during a game or other issues with the mouse getting wonky usually happen when I've been playing for a couple of hours.

All in all, I've been pretty pleased with the last couple of updates from MS for the SB -- my machine seems to be getting better with each one. Now if MS would hurry up with that fix for the stupid networking/file sharing/broken SMB that they introduced in the Nov Win10 update, I'd be much happier!

 

[tdf2001]

Sleep does seem to work fine. However, I just detached my screen, turned it around and re-attached it and my system froze. Twice in a row. Microsoft still has some work to do.

 

[zerospace-net]

Sleep does seem to work fine. However, I just detached my screen, turned it around and re-attached it and my system froze. Twice in a row. Microsoft still has some work to do.

Interesting that you say that.. mine did the same thing right after I finished installing the updates and rebooting (froze after detaching). I have not detached the screen since.

 

[rdockrey]

Something that I have noticed today is that the fan runs almost constantly. It hardly ever ran before the update. I have it in the dock and even though I have the settings set to use the Nvidia card it looks to be using the Intel graphics card. It did this right after I got it and switching to the Nvidia card fixed it. Not this time. Its getting very annoying and it is running pretty warm.

 

[zerospace-net]

Something that I have noticed today is that the fan runs almost constantly. It hardly ever ran before the update. I have it in the dock and even though I have the settings set to use the Nvidia card it looks to be using the Intel graphics card. It did this right after I got it and switching to the Nvidia card fixed it. Not this time. Its getting very annoying and it is running pretty warm.

I'm not seeing this issue (fans running all the time), and I'm using the Intel GPU for most stuff, nvidia for applications like Photoshop & games. Mine is totally quiet, as always. Did you check the nvidia settings in the control panel where you tell it what GPU to use? It may have reset on you. You could also try a two-button shutdown and see if that works.

 

[mcf517]

Interesting that you say that.. mine did the same thing right after I finished installing the updates and rebooting (froze after detaching). I have not detached the screen since.

I had the same issue as both of you guys, BSOD after detach, twice. I was pretty annoyed at that point and was about to go on a rant, but I did a manual power down, holding the power button, then starting the system up again after a few seconds, which seemed to fix everything. Hopefully, things will be okay from now on. Definitely still a beta product even after this update, but it's heading in the right direction.

 

[serenitythen]

Two days, a dozen reboots, plenty of black-screens-wake, and generally no discernible improvements later...I remain unimpressed with this product yet. So much potential; so badly bungled in execution. Story of Microsoft of late?

 

[zerospace-net]

Originally posted by mcf517

Originally Posted by zerospace-net
Interesting that you say that.. mine did the same thing right after I finished installing the updates and rebooting (froze after detaching). I have not detached the screen since.

I had the same issue as both of you guys, BSOD after detach, twice. I was pretty annoyed at that point and was about to go on a rant, but I did a manual power down, holding the power button, then starting the system up again after a few seconds, which seemed to fix everything. Hopefully, things will be okay from now on. Definitely still a beta product even after this update, but it's heading in the right direction.

After the last BSOD on detach, I rebooted once cleanly and then attempted another detach this afternoon (I find that rebooting clean after a BSOD seems to help with overall stability, don't know why). This time, detach worked fine. My system otherwise seems fairly stable (for this thing, that is).

 

[JaimitoFrog]

on two occasions, the keyboard and trackpad is unresponsive after waking from sleep. Although keyboard detach button still works. had to detach and reattach, then the keyboard and touchpad will work again. Strange,

 

[UzEE]

So here's more details after my last post. The constant fan running seems to quiet down after like 30 minutes or an hour of use.

I do have a problem with Windows Hello now though. Whenever the device wakes up from sleep or hibernate, it would get stuck on Turning on Camera... but the camera would never come on. I'd have to manually log in using the PIN. I've never had any problems with Windows Hello before so this definitely is because something in the update messed it up.

 

[savagelizards]

Okay, a couple of days in with the new update, and it did nothing for me. My Surface book has woken up twice without a display, and blue-screened twice. I still get flickering icons periodically.

I know the updates were targeted at the problem of the book running during sleep state, but there were also display driver updates that I was hoping would solve what I consider to be bigger issues. Sure, no one wants to open their book to find the battery has run down, but I have ben closing everything and shutting down to prevent display driver crashes already, so I wasn't impacted by the sleep issue. I would choose sleep issues every time over lost work, which is what I get when my book flatlines unexpectedly.

Two months today since I got my book, and nearly four months since the product launch, is a lot of time to wait for a solution. I can't help but think that a lot of the blame lies with Intel. I seem to remember reading last fall that a math error had been discovered in the i7 skylake chip somewhere. I wonder if that's the real reason why the i7 books seem to be less dependable?

 

[tdf2001]

After using the new firmware for a couple of days, I don't think anyone at Microsoft will be too pleased with the results. Sleep does work a little better, however, I had at least three occasions already when the machine simply did not wake up. Attaching and detaching the screen has not been an issue after a few crashes initially but I am not holding my breath that this is actually fixed. My docked Dell P2415Q which is actually on a semi official compatibility list almost never is turned back on when the Surface Book resumes operation out of sleep. I have to manually shut it off and back on. I am beginning to wonder why Microsoft even bother releasing the latest update. All of this is done on a brand new, fully patched Surface Book. I only loaded Office 2016, enabled Hyper-V and a couple of other office worker type applications. I am not even going to try dual 4k monitors at this point.

 

[savagelizards]

Just noticing that I am picking up some discoloration at the bottom and right edges of my screen. It's a yellowish glow that's especially noticeable on white. It doesn't show up when I snip the screen so it's a hardware issue. I hope these new drivers didn't damage my book.

 

[Talldog]

Since the update, sleep works fine for me for short periods, but if my SB is asleep long enough (perhaps long enough to go into hibernation?), when I turn it on all of my running programs are gone and when I start Firefox, I see the restore tabs error page. My admittedly uninformed speculation is that it's crashing when it tries to go into hibernation.

 

[Dush Ku]

Wow, this website doesn't work well in Win 10...

Anyway, still getting battery drain overnight on sleep, down to 94% after sleeping for 9-10 hours. Guess nothing is fixed.

 

[savagelizards]

Wow, this website doesn't work well in Win 10...

^ this

 

[savagelizards]

View attachment 122648Just noticing that I am picking up some discoloration at the bottom and right edges of my screen. It's a yellowish glow that's especially noticeable on white. It doesn't show up when I snip the screen so it's a hardware issue. I hope these new drivers didn't damage my book.

Shut my book down for about 8 hours and when I restarted it the discoloration was gone. Not sure what was up, but I suspect it must be thermally related somehow, since a restart didn't clear it last night. Never had that happen in any laptop I have ever owned.

 

[JaimitoFrog]

Since the update, sleep works fine for me for short periods, but if my SB is asleep long enough (perhaps long enough to go into hibernation?), when I turn it on all of my running programs are gone and when I start Firefox, I see the restore tabs error page. My admittedly uninformed speculation is that it's crashing when it tries to go into hibernation.

it seems they didn't fix the bug when SB goes from sleep to hibernation then to wake, it will crash. Sometimes you get BSOD, sometimes the trackpad or keyboard wont respond, or it just freezes or show partial graphics outline of say the notification center.

I reverted back to my prior ways of work around. Uncouple sleep from hibernation. I set it to never to hibernate on sleep. And set the hardware buttons for hibernation. If I want to sleep, just close the lid. If I'm traveling, I will hit the power button to hibernate it.

MS needs to put more work on this. Sleep battery life does seem better, as well as overall battery life. Detach/attach is less buggy too, now it will set tablet/desktop mode much more reliably and stable.

That silly airplane mode "on" bug is still there though. wifi and BT works, but airplane icon is still highlighted. need to click a few times to get true airplane mode and vice versa.

 

[zerospace-net]

Update after the weekend: Better, but still not great.

1) Battery life has improved during normal use (surfing, email). Battery life while playing games is about the same. Battery life while sleeping is MUCH improved for me, though I do not permit my SB to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, usually. I rarely ever allow it to enter hibernate from sleep.

2) Played Diablo 3 for many hours this weekend, and no issues with the keyboard/trackpad not responding this time. I'm not holding my breath here, though. More time will tell this tale.

3) System simply shut down on its own once in the middle of the night -- for no reason. Nothing in the event logs except an unexpected system shutdown (no BSOD). Machine was on my desk, closed, sleeping (not hibernate) and plugged in only to power (which is on a battery backup). This is a first ever.

4) Intel display driver issues continue. I sometimes have an issue where I must sign out of windows and back in after switching from my desktop monitor back to the SB's screen -- and when I do, when Windows Hello comes up to log me back in after logging out, the screen is black and there's only the cursor. Nothing but a forced shutdown/and boot sequence fixes it. This issue still exists -- I've now seen it twice since this most recent firmware update. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a Windows 10 issue and not just an Intel driver issue.

5) Airplane mode toggle bug still there ... but honestly, I collapsed the quick toggles in the action center anyways and leave my most used on the top row so I don't ever really "see" this anymore.

Why is it I get the feeling that we'll be hearing about the next generation of this device before HALF of these awful bugs are fixed? The display driver issues are getting extremely irritating, and I really wish Intel and Microsoft would figure it out and push a fix before I end up hunting for a new device. Surface Book would be perfect for me if it weren't for these stupid issues that keep requiring me to hard reboot my device... I cringe every. single. time.

 

[beefydragon]

So did I. And my 3rd generation type cover freezes the cursor frequently on my SP4.