Froze now won't boot

[Jaimi McEntire]

My Surface Pro 4 (i7, 16GB) Just froze while I was using it. So I held the power button down for 8 seconds to shut it down.

Now, it won't boot back up - hitting the power button does nothing.

Anything I can do? I've only had it two weeks! I'm not impressed with the quality so far!

Update: A post further down said to try holding the power and the Volume Up button. This worked!!

 

[Chintan Gohel]

So you're okay now?

What doesn't seem to work for you? You said you're not impressed by it

 

[Jaimi McEntire]

Yes - it's working again, thanks. What's not so impressive about it is that it can lock up, and refuse to boot unless you know the secret reset method. I'm wondering how many of these get returned as "bricked" because people don't know about this. Surely it wouldn't have been too hard to detect the kernel had been corrupted, and force a full boot.
As for a general review - the "tablet experience" is not as good as android or ipad. The battery doesn't last long enough, and everything is clunkier (too small to press in some cases, not easy to find, etc). It's not as comfortable to hold, because of the sharp edges on the bottom. It's not bad, just not as good.
But, it does have one huge advantage over those, even though it's not as good a tablet. And that is, it can run the windows software that I need to run. And it's lighter than a notebook, so that's nice too.

If I had a recommendation, I would say:

1. Battery life needs to be increased to at least 6-8 hours
2. All the edges need to be smooth, so it's comfortable to hold in your hand.
3. Tablet mode needs to be "more tablet-like" - things more easily accessable, tabs need to be larger, settings (such as brightness) need to be more logical (like a slider), etc.

Overall, I, was hoping for a better experience than what I got. But it will do the job, so I'm not sending it back.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

about battery life - this is on wifi or offline?

I can give the following suggestions for mobile - some can apply for the sp4 too:

A few things you can try out:
Check settings >system > battery > which apps are using the most energy?

1. Again, in battery section, which apps can run in the background? Can you disable those you don't need? Keep messaging enabled to run in background
2. In battery section, you can also set up battery saver to kick in when the battery reaches a certain percentage. I keep mine on 100% so it's always on battery saver mode
3. In mail app, how often do you have mails to sync? Generally the longer the time period, the less the battery usage
4. What about brightness settings? Is it on high or auto? Auto is better than a fixed setting
5. If you find that messaging app uses a lot of battery, this could be because it's linked with skype. Go to messaging app, settings and unlink skype
6. In photos app, do you have auto upload of photos enabled? If yes, try to not upload high res photos and videos unless you are charging the phone and on wifi
7. When you use some apps that are not data heavy like whatsapp or mail, you can use a lower network speed like 2G. It's what I do usually. I only use LTE when I have to use 6tag
8. If you're using edge for basic browsing, you could try using UC browser. Not only does it use less data but you can also disable images which means you save even more on data. The less data your phone has to receive, the less the energy used
9. In settings > privacy - check each of those settings to see which apps can use what. For example I can't understand why Word would need to access location info so I disabled that. There might be apps using services that they are not meant to use
10. Finally, keep wifi/cellular off when you don't need to have them on. The toggles in action centre are pretty fast so it doesn't take much time in switching internet on/off
11. Disable auto update of apps, you only update when you are ready and not when you are in need of critical things
12. For insider rings – reduce the amount of telemetry and feedback that you send – this can have a big impact
13. If you have Cortana tile pinned to start screen, remove it

Hope this helps you