Some Strange Behaviors Since Patch Tuesday

[Bandito]

I've seen some new and strange behaviors on my SP3 since last Tuesday's patches came out.

For instance, last night after I got home from work, I got out my SP3 and opened the Type Cover, powered it up from sleep by pressing the power button, and it came up in portrait mode. No amount of fiddling would get it to leave portrait mode, though everything else was working just fine.

I finally decided to reboot it, so I hit the power button on the main screen, selected shut down and waited while it completed. I gave it a few seconds of being off and then hit the power button to start back up, but got nothing. Tried this several times while holding the power button down longer each time, but still no dice.

I then tried volume up and the power button and nothing happened there, either. I was really freaked out by that. I kept trying and on the fourth time, the volume up and power button caused the Type Cover keyboard to light up, so I held the buttons down and it cycled the keyboard backlight on and off exactly four times for about 3-4 seconds each cycle. Then, it went dark and stayed dark, so I released the buttons and waited, but, still, nothing happened. Then I tried the power button again and this time it booted up normally. Phew! That was a relief.

Today, the WiFi card disconnected from the network, as it is wont to do on occasion, and when I tried to reconnect, it attempted to link back up, but then failed. After it failed, it showed no available wireless networks. I thought maybe the adapter had disappeared like it does sometimes after a wake from sleep, but it was still there and active, showing no problems (I should have known this anyway as the WiFi icon was still active in the System Tray). I ended up disabling and then re-enabling the adapter and then it began showing available networks again and automatically connected back up to the WiFi network that I use here at the office.

I hope that these new behaviors are just really strange and unrelated occurrences, but I'm beginning to wonder about these latest updates. My system has had only two real issues as of late, WiFi randomly disconnecting and slow connection speeds, but has otherwise been quite stable.

I guess that time will tell.

 

[Danielo290881]

Havent had those problems after the update. Do you have a recovery before patch day? Have you looked into reliability index (search in charms bar) if there are some new errors ?

 

[pcreyn319]

I've seen some new and strange behaviors on my SP3 since last Tuesday's patches came out.

For instance, last night after I got home from work, I got out my SP3 and opened the Type Cover, powered it up from sleep by pressing the power button, and it came up in portrait mode. No amount of fiddling would get it to leave portrait mode, though everything else was working just fine.

I finally decided to reboot it, so I hit the power button on the main screen, selected shut down and waited while it completed. I gave it a few seconds of being off and then hit the power button to start back up, but got nothing. Tried this several times while holding the power button down longer each time, but still no dice.

I then tried volume up and the power button and nothing happened there, either. I was really freaked out by that. I kept trying and on the fourth time, the volume up and power button caused the Type Cover keyboard to light up, so I held the buttons down and it cycled the keyboard backlight on and off exactly four times for about 3-4 seconds each cycle. Then, it went dark and stayed dark, so I released the buttons and waited, but, still, nothing happened. Then I tried the power button again and this time it booted up normally. Phew! That was a relief.

Today, the WiFi card disconnected from the network, as it is wont to do on occasion, and when I tried to reconnect, it attempted to link back up, but then failed. After it failed, it showed no available wireless networks. I thought maybe the adapter had disappeared like it does sometimes after a wake from sleep, but it was still there and active, showing no problems (I should have known this anyway as the WiFi icon was still active in the System Tray). I ended up disabling and then re-enabling the adapter and then it began showing available networks again and automatically connected back up to the WiFi network that I use here at the office.

I hope that these new behaviors are just really strange and unrelated occurrences, but I'm beginning to wonder about these latest updates. My system has had only two real issues as of late, WiFi randomly disconnecting and slow connection speeds, but has otherwise been quite stable.

I guess that time will tell.

I had not had any wifi problems prior to this update. I use an N router, but since the update, my wifi will disable and I have to restart it before I can reconnect to any network.

 

[Bandito]

Yeah, I need to take a look at the event logs to see if I can note anything there.

What one hand giveth, the other taketh away, eh?

 

[BillsCarnage]

I had not had any wifi problems prior to this update. I use an N router, but since the update, my wifi will disable and I have to restart it before I can reconnect to any network.

A shot in the dark, but try deleting/forgetting the connection and then reconnecting.

 

[bluegrass]

Have you looked into reliability index (search in charms bar) if there are some new errors ?

Wow! Daniel. How did you find out about this utility. It's path shows it as being in the Action Center of the control panel but you can't get there by viewing the control panel. This looks like a cool diagnostic tool that I never heard of. I just looked for it on my Windows 7 desktop and it doesn't appear to have existed in Window 7. Thank you for mentioning it. Now I want to find a way I can put in on my Start menu.

 

[wynand32]

Just a note: holding down the power button and volume-up button at the same time for long enough (15 seconds or so) is the official way to shut a Surface Pro all the way down. That's as opposed to shutting down via other methods, which doesn't power all the way down. So, I'm not surprised that this resolved the issue.

I've had a similar thing happen to me a few times, mostly before the updates on 8/12. I'll try to wake my SP3 up, usually from hibernate, and the screen will not respond. The Windows button vibrates when I touch it, so something is responding, but I usually have to do the hard shutdown to get it to start back up.

It's only happened a handful of times, so it's not been a big deal. It's definitely a bit disconcerting, though.

 

[Zog1971]

I've seen some new and strange behaviors on my SP3 since last Tuesday's patches came out.

For instance, last night after I got home from work, I got out my SP3 and opened the Type Cover, powered it up from sleep by pressing the power button, and it came up in portrait mode. No amount of fiddling would get it to leave portrait mode, though everything else was working just fine.

I finally decided to reboot it, so I hit the power button on the main screen, selected shut down and waited while it completed. I gave it a few seconds of being off and then hit the power button to start back up, but got nothing. Tried this several times while holding the power button down longer each time, but still no dice.

I then tried volume up and the power button and nothing happened there, either. I was really freaked out by that. I kept trying and on the fourth time, the volume up and power button caused the Type Cover keyboard to light up, so I held the buttons down and it cycled the keyboard backlight on and off exactly four times for about 3-4 seconds each cycle. Then, it went dark and stayed dark, so I released the buttons and waited, but, still, nothing happened. Then I tried the power button again and this time it booted up normally. Phew! That was a relief.

Today, the WiFi card disconnected from the network, as it is wont to do on occasion, and when I tried to reconnect, it attempted to link back up, but then failed. After it failed, it showed no available wireless networks. I thought maybe the adapter had disappeared like it does sometimes after a wake from sleep, but it was still there and active, showing no problems (I should have known this anyway as the WiFi icon was still active in the System Tray). I ended up disabling and then re-enabling the adapter and then it began showing available networks again and automatically connected back up to the WiFi network that I use here at the office.

I hope that these new behaviors are just really strange and unrelated occurrences, but I'm beginning to wonder about these latest updates. My system has had only two real issues as of late, WiFi randomly disconnecting and slow connection speeds, but has otherwise been quite stable.

I guess that time will tell.

I did experience pretty much the same thing you experienced with it seeming to not power on after shut down. My cursor had left the screen of the monitor that I have my SP3 hooked up to so decided to reboot. It went black and stayed black but felt i could still hear the fan running very low when i put my ear up to the vents. Tried powering on and nothing. Tried several times and was starting to get very concerned but held the power and volume up buttons. This finally pulled up the bios setup screen which I exited and it booted normally and all has been fine since. It is worth noting, and perhaps why I'm not freaking out TOO bad, is that I experienced a very similar issue on my SP1 a few times. I'm hoping it was also just a fluke as I have rebooted and powered down several times with no issues.

 

[GreyFox7]

I did experience pretty much the same thing you experienced with it seeming to not power on after shut down. My cursor had left the screen of the monitor that I have my SP3 hooked up to so decided to reboot. It went black and stayed black but felt i could still hear the fan running very low when i put my ear up to the vents. Tried powering on and nothing. Tried several times and was starting to get very concerned but held the power and volume up buttons. This finally pulled up the bios setup screen which I exited and it booted normally and all has been fine since. It is worth noting, and perhaps why I'm not freaking out TOO bad, is that I experienced a very similar issue on my SP1 a few times. I'm hoping it was also just a fluke as I have rebooted and powered down several times with no issues.

Ditto.

 

[Bandito]

Thanks, everyone. If nothing else, it's nice to know that I'm not alone in this occasional problem.