Solved My SP4 just self-destructed

[wynand32]

Okay, so, I was thinking my SP4 was performing much better after the 2/17 update and a factory reset and such. My only obvious issue was less accurate/reliable Windows Hello.

Then, this morning, I woke it up from hibernate and things started going downhill.

First, my brightness controls stopped working. Could go dark, darker, and suggested, but the latter was actually brightest. Checked display settings, and the auto-brightness setting was missing and brightness controls were wonky.

Okay, I thought. That's strange. Then, I noticed the touchpad wasn't working on my Type Cover. The keyboard works, mind you, just the touchpad wasn't. Disconnecting/reconnecting made no difference.

So, I headed over the device manager to see what's up. Now, I have all sorts of devices with exclamation marks, meaning they're not working. Okay, hard reboot (two-button). Did that about three times, no difference. This thing is hosed.

I'm a pretty level-headed guy usually, but I'm really starting to get miffed. And I was _just_ getting ready to hit publish on an editorial giving Microsoft kudos on pushing a nice update. Glad I decided to give the SP4 a last once-over beforehand.

 

[wynand32]

And now I just started it and it's stuck at a blue screen with the spinning timer... Never saw that before. Lovely.

 

[wynand32]

Okay, so, I stuck in my USB restore drive and kicked off a restore point. For some reason an app (Snagit) showed a restore point as having been uninstalled, which I didn't do. That must have been prior to whatever happened to cause the device failures, because now everything is back to form as far as I can tell. Automatic brightness toggle is back in display settings, and the trackpad works again in the Type Cover.

What a cluster. I don't have any idea if this was a fluke, if there's something wrong with my machine, or if something got corrupted by a bad app. I'm suddenly becoming very displeased with this whole thing.

 

[jad12a]

I totally understand!

 

[Afy]

This is bizzare. Unless there is a HW failure stuff like this doesn't happen spontaneously. Have installed something recently?

 

[Echrada]

When my first SP4 went toes up, it just died - complete black screen. No power or anything. So what you experienced is certainly a strange situation.

 

[GreyFox7]

Oh, very dramatic. Reset or Replace.

 

[wynand32]

Thanks for the responses, folks. Yes, it was a weird one. As far as I know, nothing happened to account for it. No power issues, too many disparate devices failing for it to be a component failure (otherwise I'd imagine it wouldn't have started up at all). Bizarre that the keyboard would work on the Type Cover but not the trackpad. And what would cause the auto-brightness toggle to disappear from display settings? Very, very bizarre indeed.

Here's what I did to resolve it: I had an app uninstall that set a restore point after the 2/17 update but prior to these issues mainfesting. I restored using it, and everything came back like nothing had happened. I'll be scouring it for malware, because who knows, and keeping an eye on it. If anything like this happens again, I'll get it replaced.

 

[wynand32]

Oh, very dramatic. Reset or Replace.

Didn't mean to be "dramatic," just found it a very odd and frustrating experience.

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

Didn't mean to be "dramatic," just found it a very odd and frustrating experience.

Curious, what are you using for browser, firewall and anti-virus?

 

[wynand32]

Curious, what are you using for browser, firewall and anti-virus?

MSFT firewall and Defender, and I switch between Edge and Chrome.

 

[wynand32]

As a quick update, whatever the heck that was, it hasn't recurred. Things are running pretty well right now, knock on wood.