Massive Battery Drain on Surface 3?

[ajharper]

Greetings,

So I bought the Surface 3 for testing at my business (I'm IT support). I loaded 8.1 Enterprise since the version that ships doesn't allow you to add the device to an Active Directory domain (I have Pro licenses and a site license for Enterprise so I'm good there).

I spent the day updating the thing (there were over 5GB in updates) and then went to bed with the battery at 44%. I left the default power settings and it was hooked up to my home wireless network. When I got up four hours later, the battery was dead.

Does anything with Enterprise make it drain the battery faster even if it's in standby/sleep? I wouldn't have thought so but I'm stunned that the battery was dead. I've got a lot of people liking the Surface 3 because of the size but if I can't mange it, then it's not an option. Any advice or insight would be helpful.

 

[GreyFox7]

Did you use the Surface 3 Driver Pack in the installation.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826

Otherwise try powercfg /sleepstudy to see what was not going to sleep.

 

[ajharper]

Did you use the Surface 3 Driver Pack in the installation.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826

Otherwise try powercfg /sleepstudy to see what was not going to sleep.

Sure did. I had to contact MS because they didn't have the drivers posted the day of release. I will try the powercfg option and see what I find. Thanks.

 

[ajharper]

So I found that two "unregistered devices stay active 100% of the time. In the sleepstudy report I see:

unregistered device \_sb.pci0.xhc1
unregistered device \_sb.pci0.gfx0

Any idea what this could be? Something similar is experienced in the Lenovo and Dell forms for their tablets. Some said it was related to a MS update and others said that didn't help (removing all but critical updates). Someone suggested maybe uninstall the USB hub and let MS re-install after reboot. So I did that, but I still lost 8% of the battery in 30 minutes. I installed over 200 MS updates yesterday. There's no way to easily determine if one of those is the culprit. I show nothing unusual in Device Manager. Anyone have any advice as to what to try (short of restoring from scratch)?

 

[TPadden]

So I found that two "unregistered devices stay active 100% of the time. In the sleepstudy report I see:

unregistered device \_sb.pci0.xhc1
unregistered device \_sb.pci0.gfx0

Any idea what this could be??

Maybe Creative Labs Sound Blaster driver ..........

 

[GreyFox7]

So I found that two "unregistered devices stay active 100% of the time. In the sleepstudy report I see:

unregistered device \_sb.pci0.xhc1
unregistered device \_sb.pci0.gfx0

Any idea what this could be? Something similar is experienced in the Lenovo and Dell forms for their tablets. Some said it was related to a MS update and others said that didn't help (removing all but critical updates). Someone suggested maybe uninstall the USB hub and let MS re-install after reboot. So I did that, but I still lost 8% of the battery in 30 minutes. I installed over 200 MS updates yesterday. There's no way to easily determine if one of those is the culprit. I show nothing unusual in Device Manager. Anyone have any advice as to what to try (short of restoring from scratch)?

Run Windows update to see if we pick up any drivers.

Check Device manager for unregistered, other device or devices with yellow symbols on them. You can try driver update on the device also...
If Update doesn't find anything, I believe the typical course is to delete them and let windows redetect the devices.

 

[ajharper]

Run Windows update to see if we pick up any drivers.

Check Device manager for unregistered, other device or devices with yellow symbols on them. You can try driver update on the device also...
If Update doesn't find anything, I believe the typical course is to delete them and let windows redetect the devices.

Unfortunately, I've already tried that. Device Manager shows nothing unusual and Windows Update says there are no updates available after running this last batch I did yesterday.

 

[Clovismod]

A Google search on the device name suggests that it is related to "SB xHCI Compliant Host Controller"
Do you have anything plugged in on the USB port ? A MicroSD Card?

 

[GreyFox7]

Unfortunately, I've already tried that. Device Manager shows nothing unusual and Windows Update says there are no updates available after running this last batch I did yesterday.

Did you fully expand all the nodes in Device Manager?

 

[ajharper]

Did you fully expand all the nodes in Device Manager?

Yes. Nothing shows with the yellow warning icon.

 

[ajharper]

A Google search on the device name suggests that it is related to "SB xHCI Compliant Host Controller"
Do you have anything plugged in on the USB port ? A MicroSD Card?

I have a microCD card in the slot on the Surface 3. I have taken it out and will see what happens over the next hour.

 

[bluegrass]

If you think it has to do with your upgrade to Enterprise, why don't you down grade to prove if that has something to do with it. The simplest way might be to do a restore to factory.