Solved Finally - a problem

[leeshor]

Those of you who have been on the forum a while know I continue to say that of the people I know who own/use, collectively, several dozens Surface Pros I have never seen one with any issue outside of the occasional video driver crash and of those I have personally configured, very few of those.

So last night a customer calls me and tells me the SP4 he bought < 2 weeks ago went belly up. Since I was supposed to go to his office today anyway he said he would charge it up and bring it in. He said he may have let the battery run down from not using it for a couple days but all it would do is flash the word Surface on the screen. Over and over. Not a boot, just a constant rhythmic flash of the word Surface.

There was no way to turn it off or force it to restart or anything. Totally unresponsive. He has an appointment with the Microsoft Store tomorrow morning.

I had to tell him he broke my perfect record.

I imagine he'll walk out with a new Surface Pro.

 

[bluegrass]

I wonder what normal symptoms are if you let you Surface battery go down to zero. I would assume you should be able to plug in a power adapter and have it boot up normally. I always plug mine in whenever I have AC near by so my battery probably rarely gets below 50 or 60 percent.

 

[sharpuser]

Ahhh. May be the rare but not extinct "Thinks charge too weak to even charge" loop, also called "Battery Deadlock". In time, even the screen would have disappeared.

The loop can even happen with full charge - the battery sends a panic signal, and the PC responds by shutting Down for protection. A firmware bug.

You can find on the Web reports of Surface batteries suddenly reporting they are exhausted - though actually fully charged.

Check this out:
Surface Pro 3 showing no life signs - like a brick

 

[leeshor]

He let it run down, then left it on the charger long enough to charge 3 tomes and tried again. No dice. Tried the power on/off and fridge. Still wouldn't start.

 

[leeshor]

My customer called me. He went to the Microsoft Store, they plugged it in, it fired right up. He stayed while it charged enough to apply updates and is now home with his working SP4. Go figure.

 

[sharpuser]

"Battery Deadlock" demon is a coward. Runs away when people are watching.

It is fun to mark this one as Solved.

 

[bsnguy]

I had the same problem with my SP4 after about a day or two. I did not let it run down, I don't think, but I did have it off and it would not turn on for anything! I let it sit (unplugged) for a while as I did something else (all the while swearing at MS and getting ready for a trip to the store) but I tried it a again a few hours later and it worked. No such issue since (but plenty of sleep-related issues and random reboots... why can't MS make this work, reliably, after all of these years? Same issue on my SP3 which is why I "upgraded." After a couple of months, same issues are back.)