Why isn't my Surface 2 Touchscreen working after update?

[jtby]

westie59's procedure did not fix it for me either

 

[StephaAa]

my replacement device is working well since about two weeks now. It is fully up to date and i have no issues.
Taking this into account i'd say the problem is only affecting a specific series of surface 2 tablets. A Hardware/Firmware + MS update in a special combination might cause this.

 

[Lee Anderson2]

Same issue here and can confirm the battery drain solution is working however it's only ever short lived. This can't be a hardware issue as a simple battery drain would not resolve this! There has to be an explanation as to why a battery drain resolves this in a way that full factory reset will not. Pull your finger out MS

 

[Pleaselisten]

Same problem with my Surface 2 - Touchscreen stopped working after updates 3 days ago. I tried posting replies / questions on this forum twice, but disappointingly, none have appeared (if the service related to my Surface 2 is anything to go by, maybe the moderating takes weeks too!!!). Just trying again in case it's third time lucky.

I've tried Refresh, factory Re-set and all to no avail. One thing the Technical people didn't tell me was that after the Re-set it would need hundreds of updates - mine has had two lots of over a hundred updates in the last 2 days - still no solution to the Touch screen problem.

Technical people called to ask me if they could suggest a workaround - they suggested I start using a keyboard and forget that Surface 2 is meant to have a touchscreen!!!!!!!!

 

[Rasetech]

I got my replacement device yesterday, works like a charm after all updates so I assume a Hardware/Firmware/Update problem StephaAa already mentioned.

 

[SpiderDonkey]

I can confirm, my surface 2 has the same problem with the touch screen

 

[Lee Anderson2]

Is there anyway to that anyone has found to flash the firmware back on the device? Simply resetting back to factory setting is not going to work the same as it would not work if you formatted a HDD in a pc after flashing the firmware of a component in there. It's unbelievable how many people this is happening to all after updates and MS are still insisting that this is a hardware failure?! I think not

 

[StephaAa]

i don't have the answer but i did a factory reset twice and both times after that the Surface found one available firmware update to install.
so my thought on this was that the factory reset also resets the firmware !?

 

[Lee Anderson2]

I was thinking more like if you say flash the firmware of a dvd drive in your pc it would not make a difference if you did a factory restore. The firmware would stay the same until you flashed it again with another firmware? I know my device also did a 'firmware' update both times I restored it but I am not convinced that everything was back to day 1 settings. Some components can have firmware independent of windows based updates unless I am wrong?

 

[Duane Harlick]

My Surface 2 keypad has gone out several times in the past couple months and each time I've been able to get it back with the battery drain sequence. Key seems to be leaving it sit dead for a few days, then charging it without the keyboard attached.

Last week, however, it went out again. This time I went to the updates area to see if/when it had most recently updated. There was a message "Click here to install updates..." So I clicked it, REMOVED the keypad, and allowed the updates to run. When my Surface re-started, my touch screen was functioning again...

This is REALLY a weird issue that MS has stumbled into...

 

[Lee Anderson2]

Sorry do you mean the touchscreen was functioning again rather than the keypad?

 

[Duane Harlick]

Yes, sorry. The Touch Screen is now working again...

 

[Lee Anderson2]

That could be really useful for everyone on here until someone comes up with a more permanent solution. Thanks!

 

[Nevada Hamaker]

Here's a "me too" with some additional information.

The other day I installed updates and the touchscreen stopped working. I tried all of the various potential solutions I could find, short of resetting the device, to no avail. So I went ahead and did a reset. I thought about doing a "refresh" first, but decided to do a full reset.

After the reset, the touchscreen worked again. Nice thing is that it was able to restore a "backup" from the "cloud" so that all my apps were there (though not logged in, in the case of apps like Netflix). And, as expected, now a lot of updates were available.

The updates came in a couple of waves. After the second round of updates, well, the touchscreen stopped responding. It's pretty clear that one of these updates is the culprit. I tried uninstalling a bunch of them (though not all) to no avail. Interestingly, one of the updates (KB3021910) could not be uninstalled. This, as far as I could tell from sorting the list, was the final update installed. It may be the one that is the cause.

My next steps will be to try a reset again, and this time install updates a few at a time to see if and when it breaks again. Hopefully enough people are reporting this that Microsoft will see fit to fix it on their end, despite the fact that Windows RT is effectively a dead product now.

 

[Lee Anderson2]

Keep us informed or if anyone is going through the updates now it might be worth avoiding that one and let us know how you get on. Don't think I could take the pain of doing it all for a third time

 

[StephaAa]

i also tried that method with my old device. after the factory reset i let it install all office updates first, second the windows updates in batches of 3-5 depending on their size.
when it was finished everything was working fine and i deactivated the auto update functionality like described in previous posts.

didn't help. even with these settings (reg hack on RT because RT doesn't allow deactivating updates) it downloads and installs updates.

My guess, if you know the critical KB - how do you want to prevent it getting downloaded and installed?

 

[LongTrail]

My Mother-in-laws Surface 2 also has the same issue, she was in contact with Microsoft who appear to have walked her through a reset to no avail. The device is out of warranty so they wanted $200 to send her a refurbished device... She's now talking about buying an iPad! I'm not seeing many other threads about this but I'm pretty certain some update caused this problem.

If anyone finds a fix please post it, I will likewise do the same...

Microsoft - if you're reading please offer advice, there's enough data here to suggest this is not a hardware failure (esp given this device is very cared for).

 

[Lee Anderson2]

Battery drain no longer appears to be doing the trick for me meaning I am left with just the keyboard and trackpad. This is really annoying when there is so much certainty that this is indeed a software issue and not a hardware one.

 

[LongTrail]

I did a reset this evening using a recovery usb, touch screen still does not work. I've not tried the battery burn down routine yet, with three young children I can't afford to be doing this. Microsoft - please step up.

 

[StephaAa]

i just reported it to the surface Team on Facebook. They seem to be responding pretty direct to users. Maybe it can be escalated if many many users report it on the surface Facebook page.