Back to the bad old days of SP4

[Dirty Surface]

For most of 2017 the Surface Pro 4 had matured into a reliable, performant and delightful device to use day in and day out.

So I am gutted that the last Windows update with accompanying hardware drivers has sent the SP4 back to the bad old days of inconsistency, unreliability and frustration.

I'm getting all the old favourites:

Black screen with just a mouse cursor on some power on from sleep
Failure to sleep probably and draining battery
Unable to log out or shutdown
Cover keyboard/mouse not working after sleep

I've installed the latest driver set .msi (s) and nothing has returned my SP4 back to being reliable.

I'm on Win Pro 10 Version 1709 OS Build 16299.192 and driver pack
SurfacePro4_win10_16299_1801001_0.msi

I've just done another windows update and noticed its installed a smartpad driver called:
Elan - Input - Smart-Pad ????

Also today the SP4 refused to see the cover keyboard. Even a hard reboot refused to fix it. Had to uninstall then reinstall the last driver .msi to fix the problem.

Come on Microsoft, time to concentrate on quality and get this fixed.

 

[Dirty Surface]

...another failure to turn on from sleep today. Got a bugcheck in the event viewer, but not sure it helps much:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000019c (0x0000000000000010, 0xffffe58b329fe080, 0xffffe58b316ab250, 0xffffe58b36260270). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.

The WIN32K_POWER_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT bug check has a value of 0x0000019C. This indicates that Win32k did not turn the monitor on in a timely manner.

 

[drm_jack]

Cover keyboard/mouse not working after sleep

Hey. Mine started to suffer from this just today. Did you find any way to solve it? Thanks a lot!

 

[Dirty Surface]

Hey. Mine started to suffer from this just today. Did you find any way to solve it? Thanks a lot!

Not even several hard reboots solved the problem for me. I think the USB port was disabled too, as it wouldn't respond to plugging in a USB keyboard.

I ended up using the touchscreen to uninstall the SurfacePro4_win10_16299_1801001_0.msi driver pack, rebooting. (which enabled the keyboard) and reinstalling the driver pack.

I'm thinking a complete fresh install of Windows and the latest driver pack might be worth a punt to get back to a reliable state, but I haven't had time to faff around doing that.

Good Luck

 

[drm_jack]

Yeah, tried everything to no avail. End up reinstalling the OS from a bootable USB from MS webpage. The SP4 is still updating, takes forever. Still, seems like the problem persists. No luck!

 

[Dirty Surface]

Yeah, tried everything to no avail. End up reinstalling the OS from a bootable USB from MS webpage. The SP4 is still updating, takes forever. Still, seems like the problem persists. No luck!

You need to apply the driver set msi after a fresh WIndows install and Windows Update. Here: Download Surface Pro 4 Drivers and Firmware from Official Microsoft Download Center [Make sure you pick the right one for your Windows release]

Windows Update never seems to apply all the driver consistently to a Surface in my experience.

 

[drm_jack]

Thanks for the heads up. But the drivers update didn't work.

Nothing would work. I spent 2 hours with MS support this afternoon, remote access and all, and it didn't work.

But just when I was going to give it up, I went to device manager and started to go through every keyboard related driver and uncheck every "allow the computer to turn off this device" under power management tab. USB, human interface devices, you name it. I still don't know which one was the correct switch, but everything works fine now!

Hope this helps someone who was just as desperate as I was!

Cheers, typing from my fully functional type cover keyboard! =)

 

[Dirty Surface]

Thanks for the heads up. But the drivers update didn't work.

Nothing would work. I spent 2 hours with MS support this afternoon, remote access and all, and it didn't work.

But just when I was going to give it up, I went to device manager and started to go through every keyboard related driver and uncheck every "allow the computer to turn off this device" under power management tab. USB, human interface devices, you name it. I still don't know which one was the correct switch, but everything works fine now!

Hope this helps someone who was just as desperate as I was!

Cheers, typing from my fully functional type cover keyboard! =)

Have you turned off "Connected Standby" power mode? My understanding is with connected standby on (which is the default configuration for SP4) you won't see a power management tab in device manager properties for any device. Certainly I don't see that tab.

More importantly, if you disable the ability for the OS to turn off the keyboard then I assume it will remain powered in sleep mode, which would be a drain on the battery. However if you are just using hibernate mode, then I guess this isn't a concern.

Did you knowingly turn off connected standby? Or did this happen as part of the trouble shooting? Or does a fresh Win install kaputt CS?

 

[drm_jack]

Good morning!

Turning off "Connected Standby" wasn't necessary.

Most of the drivers don't show the power management tab, that's true (including Keyboard and Mice options). But it does show up in both drivers under "Universal Serial Bus Controller" and also under "Human Interface Devices" related to the "USB Input Device".

As for the keyboard remaining powered, I actually don't know, because it does turn the lights off, as usual, when the type cover remains idle for more than 10 seconds and also when I close the lid, it also turns the lights off.

I don't use hibernation (ever!), find it to be a useless setting, but in sleep mode I didn't note any unusual power drain during the night.

 

[Dirty Surface]

SP4 rebooted from another unexpected shutdown during sleep. At least the 19c bugcheck is consistent.
Maybe I'll go remind myself how to do a memory dump analysis

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000019c (0x0000000000000010, 0xffffe4062cb74080, 0xffffe406289bc430, 0xffffe4062e763bd0). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 0887fba9-3047-4182-b632-c55a0006faa8.

 

[Dirty Surface]

In fact SP4 has crashed 5 times in the last week. All the same bugcheck. Looks like bios/kernel type stuff.

 

[macmee]

This just sounds like the typical set of problems I always face with Windows.