hot surface pro 2 and non-existant battery life

[ladygeek]

Hi,

I'm new, be kind

I bought a surface pro 2 in the US in October 2013, and all was fine until I started getting problems with the December update (not sleeping, reduced battery life, overheating). Having read the forums/news I appreciated that it wasn't just me and I should wait for the next update.

Installed the Patch Tuesday Defender updates from the 14 Jan in the UK hoping that some things would be fixed. Apparently not.

Now the battery life is non-existent. I had a fully charged SP2 this morning, my default is powersaving mode. Just turned it on at the other end of my long journey, and my SP2 is warm to the touch and battery indicator is 5%.

Is there any other update I'm missing? Should I got to MS support? Will hibernate rather than sleep help?
Just starting to regret my 'always keep up to date with updates' ethos now.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[mennogreg]

They are supposedly releasing the firmware update in waves as of yesterday. The Patch Tuesday updates were unrelated. If you can, see if you can exchange it. The new firmware may fix it, but it can't do anything about the excessive wear on your device if this was a daily thing.

EDIT: Didn't want to make it sound as if the firmware update doesn't exist, it certainly does. We just don't know why some have gotten it and others haven't yet.

 

[eelpout]

Are you absolutely sure it's going to sleep? Some of us have an issue with "idle" sleep refusing to work if WiFi is enabled. This bug hit me after installing the Jan. 14th updates.

In the meantime if I'm going to leave my SP2 alone for a while, I either put it to sleep manually by closing the lid or turning off WiFi, which let's it sleep.

 

[macmee]

Hi,

I'm new, be kind

I bought a surface pro 2 in the US in October 2013, and all was fine until I started getting problems with the December update (not sleeping, reduced battery life, overheating). Having read the forums/news I appreciated that it wasn't just me and I should wait for the next update.

Installed the Patch Tuesday Defender updates from the 14 Jan in the UK hoping that some things would be fixed. Apparently not.

Now the battery life is non-existent. I had a fully charged SP2 this morning, my default is powersaving mode. Just turned it on at the other end of my long journey, and my SP2 is warm to the touch and battery indicator is 5%.

Is there any other update I'm missing? Should I got to MS support? Will hibernate rather than sleep help?
Just starting to regret my 'always keep up to date with updates' ethos now.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers.

I am aware of an issue with low power mode where the device will sometimes reboot itself when in sleep. I would suggest using hibernate over sleep anyway because it will bypass the other common bug of the surface undergoing a silent BSOD occasionally as it attempts to come out of sleep.

Due to the reduced battery life and overheating you experienced I would seriously consider calling Microsoft and telling them about these issues. Stress the fact that the device has been overheating and explain your concerns. It's perfectly legitimate to assume that your device has experienced damage from extreme battery wear and excessive heating. If they don't allow the exchange press for them to talk to their supervisors. There's no reason you should have to suffer potential damage to your device because of their broken firmware.

 

[Philtastic]

As far as I've seen, the new firmware is out in select regions right now (it's here in Toronto, Canada) but verdict is still out as to whether it truly fixes the problem. We'll probably need to wait at least for the end of today or over night before we'll have some idea.

As Mennogreg said, you should go see if you can do a warranty exhange since the firmware won't fix the overheating damage and battery wear from the bugged firmware. In the meantime, I've read that using hibernate/shutdown instead of sleep prevents it or atleast limits how often it wakes up.

 

[jrapdx]

Hi,

I'm new, be kind

I bought a surface pro 2 in the US in October 2013, and all was fine until I started getting problems with the December update (not sleeping, reduced battery life, overheating). Having read the forums/news I appreciated that it wasn't just me and I should wait for the next update.

Installed the Patch Tuesday Defender updates from the 14 Jan in the UK hoping that some things would be fixed. Apparently not.

Now the battery life is non-existent. I had a fully charged SP2 this morning, my default is powersaving mode. Just turned it on at the other end of my long journey, and my SP2 is warm to the touch and battery indicator is 5%.

Is there any other update I'm missing? Should I got to MS support? Will hibernate rather than sleep help?
Just starting to regret my 'always keep up to date with updates' ethos now.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers.

For me it was hard to fully characterize the effects of the Dec 10 Bad Firmware Incident. My first SP2 was "bitten" by it, and it had common symptoms, like "insomnia" (waking from sleep randomly), revving up CPU and inexplicably running hot among others. I exchanged it for a new SP2 earlier this week, so I'm still sorting out the differences.

To date, the new machine has not shown SP2 Insomnia, and generally running barely warm under normal load. Battery life is good, maybe >= 9 hours under ordinary use conditions. I regard the assessment of "OK" as provisional.

I've become very wary of unknown updates. After the December experience, I highly recommend disabling auto updating. While routine "Defender" updates are benign, I'm not going to install any firmware blob until shown "safe" on similar hardware.

To each their own, but that's my policy and I'm sticking to it...