Surface Book Battery Drain while SHUTDOWN

[dougb2000]

I know that there are several threads tied to battery drain while in sleep or hybernate mode, however, my issue is with my Surface Book "SHUTDOWN'. If i am at 100% charge and then shutdown and leave it for 1-2 weeks, it will be nearly dead when I power it on. This seemed strange so over the past 2 days I ran a test against my Surface Pro 3:

[table="width: 500, class: outer_border, align: left"]
[tr]
[td]After:[/td]
[td]Surface Pro 3[/td]
[td]Surface Book[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]24 hours[/td]
[td]100%[/td]
[td]93% (96%/84%)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]48 hours [/td]
[td]100%[/td]
[td]87% (89%/81%)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]72 hours[/td]
[td]100%[/td]
[td]81% (82%/79%)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]144 hours[/td]
[td]100%[/td]
[td]75% (75%/76%)[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

This confirmed my concern. I will check again tomorrow morning. I don't use it that often but when I want to use it I want to pull it out of the case and turn it on without having to plug it in. I called MS and they suggested factory reset, which I can do but i have a lot of stuff on it (same as Surface Pro 3) and I'm not sure I understand why the software I have installed is causing battery drain when the Surface is shut down. All I can think is perhaps there is a USB wakeup function or some other sort of wakeup function or maybe the circuit to eject the screen is running even after shutdown.

Anyone have any comments or thoughts?

(Update)
As you can see with the new measurements, the Surface Pro continues to sit at 100% even after a week. What is a little interesting with the Surface Book is that it lost nearly 6-6.5% per day, however after Friday it was off for 3 days and after being turned back on, it dropped 6% total, not 6% per day. Almost as thought it waits for some amount of time before being fully off and prior to that it drops around 6%.

Thanks,
Doug

 

[spasell]

Happening to me as well

 

[zerospace-net]

I find this interesting, but can't say I've seen it, since I do not shut my Surface Book off pretty much ever. I wonder how many folks would not notice a problem like this for the same reason?

I do know that batteries will lose charge even while a machine (or any device) is off, though most discharge at a very, very slow rate. I am wondering, though, if the Surface Book's "muscle wire" (the mechanism that holds the clipboard to the base) has to do with the faster drain rate while powered down? I thought that a voltage has to be applied to that wire in order to make it release (or grab) the clipboard when detaching/re-attaching, but I wonder if there's any sort of more constant voltage being applied to it, even while the device is off. I'll admit I haven't looked at the iFixit teardown for the Surface Book just yet, so perhaps that would yield something more conclusive on this idea.

 

[dougb2000]

I did see a post on one of these forums that said they went to start and then shutdown and it appeared to shutdown but if they pressed a key then keyboard would light up which I would think should not happen. I haven't checked mine for this yet.

 

[JaimitoFrog]

Someone posted about disabling keyboard or mice waking in the device manager, although I have not tried this.

I have shut down the SB at 100%, and turn it on after 10hr later, and it was still at 100%.

 

[dougb2000]

If any of you have a Surface Book and don't use it every day, any chance you could charge it up, shut down and then power up and check the battery charge at 24 hours and 48 hours, shutting down in between? MS's next request to me is to go with a factory restore but if one you gets the same battery drain that I am then I think a factory restore is a waste of time.

Thanks,
Doug

 

[dougb2000]

Interesting, I decided to check updates again and there was a "hardware" update. Seems this must have come over the past week or so. Anyway, I clicked shutdown and as soon as it was off I tried pressing a key, which in the past the keyboard would light up, but did not this time. So, I'm trying again, we'll see how it looks tomorrow morning and I'll report back.

 

[dougb2000]

Looks like that was of no help. After 20 hours I have 96%.

 

[zerospace-net]

Interesting, I decided to check updates again and there was a "hardware" update. Seems this must have come over the past week or so. Anyway, I clicked shutdown and as soon as it was off I tried pressing a key, which in the past the keyboard would light up, but did not this time. So, I'm trying again, we'll see how it looks tomorrow morning and I'll report back.

The last hardware update I got was 12/17. Haven't seen anything since...

 

[dougb2000]

Perhaps. I decided to do a factory reset and see how the battery life is without anything installed. If it has the same drain then I'll have them swap it out. This forum definitely seems to suggest that some of the hardware is bad and others are having no issues. There is a forum post over at Microsoft Answers that suggest this. I tried to post it but I don't have enough posts to post links yet.

 

[dougb2000]

Ok, no go, after a factory reset and without adding any software, the battery still depleted with it shout down. So, I have ordered a replacement and will let you know if that's any different.

 

[spasell]

I have the same issue and many others are well.

 

[dougb2000]

I just got the replacement yesterday, charged it to 100%, and then let it sit on shutdown overnight and it's down to 96%. What puzzles me is the handful of people that say that their Surface Book stays at 100%. Is it only a small handful that do work? Very strange. I could get another replacement but I suspect that would be no different. Looks like let it go a bit longer and see if they find a solution.

 

[chuckk9032]

Same issue here. Surface Book discharges when off. Surface Pro 4 does not. Tired of waiting for a solution or any useful information from Microsoft.

 

[sprintrjm]

I just did the firmware update from1-27-16 it said that it would fix some battery issues.

I can confirm that my surface book dropped 10% over night, it was shutdown at 100%.

good thing i got this for only $1100 on craigslist. Back to craigslist you go...

 

[zerospace-net]

I just did the firmware update from1-27-16 it said that it would fix some battery issues.

I can confirm that my surface book dropped 10% over night, it was shutdown at 100%.

good thing i got this for only $1100 on craigslist. Back to craigslist you go...

This update did not fix the battery drain problem -- it only addressed charging speed, from what I've read. MS has promised an update for the battery drain issue (which is rumored to be an Intel skylake issue) asap.

 

[sprintrjm]

thanks for the good info, glad they addressed the charging speed.

On a side note this web site is unusable to reply from IE or the edge browser on my surfacebook.

It lags so bad, which im sure is because of the auto spell check feature.

Funny that a windows forum is only usable with the chrome browser.

 

[Alan T1]

This possibly explained why my brand new SB I unwrapped today was completed battery depleted. It was 0%.

Electrnics I have had in the past usually 50-60% charged upon unwrapping.

This is a bad omen to my experience with the SB.

 

[netwirejohn]

I opened a case with Microsoft about this yesterday and they told me to bring it to the store to get it swapped. I also had find it weird that it would drain with it being powered off and it was last left at 100%. I also had purchased this back in November 2016.

 

[dov1978]

Someone posted about disabling keyboard or mice waking in the device manager, although I have not tried this.

I have shut down the SB at 100%, and turn it on after 10hr later, and it was still at 100%.

I was having this problem with my SP2 until I did this change and it made all the difference.