Surface Book Freezing After Firmware Update

[kittengirl]

Just noticed that I am having this color issue as well. Seems to occur when I am scrolling through webpages. I've also noticed a sort of popping noise every so often. I'm sure these will be addressed in updates.

I just experienced it too, on EDGE, but I'm not seeing it in IE. I think it is mostly a problem with EDGE - just need to remember to use IE as my default browser for now. I like some features of EDGE, such as the notation feature, but unless I have reason to use that, it's just not worth it to me until all the bugs get worked out.

 

[Great deal]

Learnt the hard way, never buy a device upon release. Yes you get the boost to your ego that you are 'one of the first'...99% of the time you are also the one with the problems and less money in your pocket, but hey, ego got a boost! Seriously though, I used to buy all the tech crap the day it came out, only to suffer and suffer and then regret due to hindsight. I will wait until the price comes down and the tech is stable. Hows the hinge wobble?

 

[Erik Talbert]

The hinge wobble is non-existent for me, it moves when you poke it just like any other screen but even banging on the base mine doesn't move at all. As for buyers regret and other issues, I have no regrets this thing is the best feeling piece of tech I have ever touched, and I had some massive issues out of the box (the entire base of the unit didn't register or work for 5 hours of debugging), but once I got it fixed there is no gamebreaking bugs with the thing (For me, I don't use Hyper-V so disabling that was no issue, I don't use Edge yet, waiting for extensions, so no freezes either.)

 

[Fred_S]

It's all the ads on this site. They're terrible. Use IE or other browswer with adblock. Avoid MS Edge on ad-laden websites.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: In it's current state, MS Edge is not a web browser, it's an ad-delivery system.

 

[tedj101]

The only issues I've had so far was an unresponsive keyboard/touchpad a few times, before the firmware update. I had to put it to sleep, then back on to get the keyboard working again. Been pretty smooth since I updated, but not a ton of time playing, yet. Glad I have 30 days to find bugs.

Edit: Scratch that, also having an issue with the rear camera not snapping a photo. Displays the scene with a small white box flashing in the center, and won't capture an image. Front facing camera works normally.

I had the problem with the camera and someone on here suggested that I change the aspect ration to 4:3. It worked fine. I haven't tried changing it back yet. I was just glad that it worked!

<TED>

 

[tedj101]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: In it's current state, MS Edge is not a web browser, it's an ad-delivery system.

I agree. I am switching to IE and putting Ad Block on it!

<TED>

 

[ParoleGA]

I had the problem with the camera and someone on here suggested that I change the aspect ration to 4:3. It worked fine. I haven't tried changing it back yet. I was just glad that it worked!

<TED>

I appreciate the info. I saw that post as well, but it didn't help. I honestly haven't even bothered to check again. I don't really take photos with it, and wouldn't much care if it did t have the rear camera. The front camera is good to have for Skype, etc. They did put it there, so it should work, but doesn't appear to be a hardware issue to these untrained eyes. Probably a software bug.

 

[ctk4949]

))) sorry guys, it really feels bad as you must have spent a lot of money on those. But your experience now confirms the lack of quality in MS products. As fanboys as some here are, please how on earth you go and spend almost 2000$ on this only to have it freeze and all sort of problems users have posted here???? HOW??? I have my macbook pro since 2010 and have never had any issues with it, never! As bad as you all think Apple is, and greedy and all sort of things, their products on the most part last! of course there are issues also, as in every product but please. This thread is a pure reason NOT to buy this surface book!

You do know most people only go to forums to complain about something. If the Surface Book is working fine, they usually don't make a thread saying my Surface Book is working great.

 

[Akira X]

i7/512/dgpu

Enjoying the Surface Book, feels like a notebook from the future (think BMW i8 or Tesla)
Keyboard feels great, super fast, screen is amazing.
Windows hello is seriously a game changer, its so fast, no more messy germ ridden fingerprint reader squares.
battery life feels great, I need more time and some and some "powercfg /batteryreport" reports to verify.

The only complaint from one person in my circle was that the SD card doesn't go flush in(like on the surface pro series) as they keep an SD card in their surface pro 3, as do I, its in the back out of the way. The SD card sticks out of the slot on the Surface Book.

Issues
I've had the audio pop crackle issue.
if you remove the display in the middle of doing something the gpu driver can crash. not all the time.
the windows hello camera fails to turn on coming out of sleep mode at times

that's all for now...

 

[geraldem]

Can you share what your power settings are? I am getting horrible battery life. 4 or 5 hours tops...no where near the 10 to 12 I though

 

[Akira X]

Can you share what your power settings are? I am getting horrible battery life. 4 or 5 hours tops...no where near the 10 to 12 I though

Nothing special, 60% brightness. Try running some reports:

1. Right-click the start button, select "Command Prompt(Admin)"
2. Type powercfg /batteryreport
3. Type powercfg /sleepstudy

These commands will create two html files in the directory you run the command from. If you want the reports in a different directory, change to that directory before running the commands.

Reports
sleepstudy-report.html
The sleepstudy report shows the various processes that may be killing your battery. This is mine (i7/512/16)

Here you see the gpu in the display(not the dGPU in the base) eating up 82%, that's high... green is good, red is bad.

battery-report.html
The battery report shows how the battery gets used, Scroll to the very bottom to see "Battery life Estimates". Here's mine:

Here you see a breakdown, day by day.. Mine is hovering around the 7-9 hour range. But with the sleep study report showing those high numbers, it will affect your battery estimates.

 

[Akira X]

Realize battery life is directly affected by what you are doing. Sitting here on the Windows Central forum site is currently eating up 20% of my CPU in edge browser..

Update
As I suspected, the Ads on the forum site are draining the battery. After installing the Ad blocker hosts file, CPU usage is now under 2% on average while sitting on this very forum site. A 900% improvement!!!

Do a search on "adblock host file" and that should take you to the MVPs.org site where you can download the hosts file. While I wouldn't recommend running .bat files from web sites on your PC, You can manually install the HOSTS by extracting it from the .zip file. Navigate to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Rename the current HOSTS file to HOSTS.old. Copy the new HOSTS file from the zip. Close and reopen edge.

Open up task manager(right-click start, select task manager, click more details, click performance, you should land on CPU tab) while you make the switch and note how the CPU usage is affected.

The hosts file method is free. They accept donations however, enjoy...

To undo, just reverse. (Delete HOSTS file, Rename HOSTS.old to HOSTS)

 

[geraldem]

wow, that is just unbelievable! Thanks so much. Go figure, ads are the problem. Also, I think I need push on this with some more active time, get some more data and see if I have an issue, or just need to run a few charge cycles.

 

[ttsoldier]

Realize battery life is directly affected by what you are doing. Sitting here on the Windows Central forum site is currently eating up 20% of my CPU in edge browser..

Update
As I suspected, the Ads on the forum site are draining the battery. After installing the Ad blocker hosts file, CPU usage is now under 2% on average while sitting on this very forum site. A 900% improvement!!!

Do a search on "adblock host file" and that should take you to the MVPs.org site where you can download the hosts file. While I wouldn't recommend running .bat files from web sites on your PC, You can manually install the HOSTS by extracting it from the .zip file. Navigate to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Rename the current HOSTS file to HOSTS.old. Copy the new HOSTS file from the zip. Close and reopen edge.

Open up task manager(right-click start, select task manager, click more details, click performance, you should land on CPU tab) while you make the switch and note how the CPU usage is affected.

The hosts file method is free. They accept donations however, enjoy...

To undo, just reverse. (Delete HOSTS file, Rename HOSTS.old to HOSTS)

Adfender now supports mirosoft edge... Not an extension, but hey, it works

AdFender - The Ultimate Ad Blocker

 

[JonVincent]

My i7 Surface Book has also been suffering from occasional total lockups (requiring power cycling to fix). On the Windows Support forum, they've come to the conclusion it's a hardware issue with a few of the i7 processors. They make a pretty good case.

At any rate, those who have given up trying to fix the problem through software and gotten replacement 'Books (online via Microsoft Support or at the stores) have said they've worked flawlessly. That will be the route we take.

From what I've seen, I'd say "save yourself the headache" and just get a replacement.

 

[Gregory Newman]

Microsoft had first generation problems with the first Windows RT tablets until the firmware updates
cleared them up. the Surface 2 Rt tablets ran pretty good but were replaced by the Atom CPU new
Surface 3 which runs full windows 8.1/ windows 10 ok. the second generation surface books will be
better and the third great!

 

[Akira X]

Nothing special, 60% brightness. Try running some reports:

1. Right-click the start button, select "Command Prompt(Admin)"
2. Type powercfg /batteryreport
3. Type powercfg /sleepstudy

These commands will create two html files in the directory you run the command from. If you want the reports in a different directory, change to that directory before running the commands.

Reports
sleepstudy-report.html
The sleepstudy report shows the various processes that may be killing your battery. This is mine (i7/512/16)
View attachment 115403
Here you see the gpu in the display(not the dGPU in the base) eating up 82%, that's high... green is good, red is bad.

battery-report.html
The battery report shows how the battery gets used, Scroll to the very bottom to see "Battery life Estimates". Here's mine:
View attachment 115404
Here you see a breakdown, day by day.. Mine is hovering around the 7-9 hour range. But with the sleep study report showing those high numbers, it will affect your battery estimates.

getting my 12hrs.:wink:

 

[etc6849]

I went to buy a Surface Book last night at Best Buy, but they only had one left and it had 128GB of hard drive space; not enough space since the tablet doesn't have an sd card reader (keyboard part does though).

Anyways, I think they must have had the i7 on display. I played with it for a while, but it crashed 4 times on me! It seemed to happen whenever I'd unlatch it. I really wanted one, but now I'm afraid to buy one.

My Surface Pro 3 i7 has been solid. Never froze up once, and works beautifully under Windows 10 as it did under 8.1. I guess I won't be upgrading. Maybe wait for version 3 to come out like I did for the Surface!

On a different note, too bad Sony discontinued making laptops; their Z series was a real high-end laptop and actually worked out of the box. It could change between intel and NVidia graphics on the fly (and this was 6-7 years ago) without crashing. The one I have still works and even came with SSD's in raid 0 (for 256GB of space).

My i7 Surface Book has also been suffering from occasional total lockups (requiring power cycling to fix). On the Windows Support forum, they've come to the conclusion it's a hardware issue with a few of the i7 processors. They make a pretty good case.

At any rate, those who have given up trying to fix the problem through software and gotten replacement 'Books (online via Microsoft Support or at the stores) have said they've worked flawlessly. That will be the route we take.

From what I've seen, I'd say "save yourself the headache" and just get a replacement.