SB2 plugged in, not charging

[macmee]

The other day my surface started saying "plugged in, not charging" and now will not charge. Things I have tried to fix it are:

1. re-installing windows
2. trying a usb-c power source
3. charging the clipboard directly
4. tee-pee mode + base & then trying to charge
5. turning off and on
6. charging in safe mode
7. charging with the device turned off
8. low performance mode and battery saver on

^ in every condition above, I am trapped in the same state of "plugged in, not charging". Nothing is running on the device at all (so no apps consuming a lot of power).

I'd have to spend like $50 to uber to the microsoft store and back, which I don't want to spend time and money doing, so I am really hoping someone here knows an alternative

 

[sharpuser]

Sorry about these troubles, @macmee

I know you tried charging with USB-C, but did you try a different Surface charger? It could be that your charger has gone weak or bad, and USB-C is not sufficient to get out of the low battery state. Can you borrow one from someone (even for a moment at a café, library, etc.)?

 

[jnjroach]

The other day my surface started saying "plugged in, not charging" and now will not charge. Things I have tried to fix it are:

1. re-installing windows
2. trying a usb-c power source
3. charging the clipboard directly
4. tee-pee mode + base & then trying to charge
5. turning off and on
6. charging in safe mode
7. charging with the device turned off
8. low performance mode and battery saver on

^ in every condition above, I am trapped in the same state of "plugged in, not charging". Nothing is running on the device at all (so no apps consuming a lot of power).

I'd have to spend like $50 to uber to the microsoft store and back, which I don't want to spend time and money doing, so I am really hoping someone here knows an alternative

One other thing that can help with issues on the base is a full "clean" shutdown. While the device is powered on and logged in press and hold the power button past the slide down to shutdown until it boots into a Diagnostic CMD screen....release the power button and it will perform a full and clean shutdown. It should look like this done correctly:

If this doesn't fix it I would replace the power supply...

 

[macmee]

I think the full clean shut down might have fixed it, I also put it into the BIOS screen, and for good measure updated windows. After updating it started charging again. Abit worried it will break again but I'll see!

 

[sharpuser]

Good news. Let us know …

 

[Compusmurf]

Full drain where it powers off, then plug in seems to solve this. I have it happen once every few months.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[Deryl McCarty]

Same issues and went through the same corrective steps. I have yet to try jnjroach's approach. I did find that charging with the "came with the SB2" charger AFTER I had discharged both batteries below 50% did work. What worked better was discharging to power off-zero % with the tablet only, but leaving the base battery plugged in, then put both base and tablet back together and power on with charger connected.

What has ended up concerning me more is that now that I am regularly back to 100% charge again, I ran a few "battery reports" ( in PowerShell admin or not, insert: powercfg /batteryreport /output c:\users\"YOUR username" \Desktop\battery_report.html /Duration (in days)) and about the same time as I started having "not charging" issues my battery capacity started dropping and staying dropped. I think I have now lost some 6k mWh out of the 84,500 design capacity.

I know that capacity drops are normal in LION batteries after a time, but with only 31 battery cycles one would think that a bit early.

I use a Surface Dock for normal operations but I sometimes used the regular charger when charging the tablet alone, say, while taking notes at a meeting (after meeting, after meeting). The tablet charging circuit responds to that charger better than the Dock.

 

[macmee]

I just checked mine and I have no idea what to make of it. Apparently I'm at 12 cycles and have lost 2k from the clipboard, but the base is 1k over capacity:

https://i.imgur.com/nusrlue.png

maybe there's some margin of error with these reports, or not all batteries are created equally?

Now I'm wondering about something else though. Lets say in 3 years I want to replace the batteries in my device. Realistically I'll have upgraded devices by then, but is it really true that there's no path to replacing the batteries yourself? You really have to pay $500 USD to Microsoft for another unit completely?