Surface Book Behaving Better

[Niterider4]

My SB (no dGPU) has been behaving fairly well for the past several days. This represents a significant improvement, since I have rarely had several days in a row where I have not had to troubleshoot something on my SB. On the whole, my Surface Book experience has been characterized by frustration and a lot of wasted time and energy.

Specifically: Windows Hello is back to working as it should. The detach and reattach functions and icons are working as they should. The SB wakes up from sleep and hibernate as it should. Battery management and consumption seem to be normal. I have not had any freezes or crashes.

Airplane mode still shows that it is on, which is a ridiculous bug for a premier Windows laptop. How Microsoft cannot fix this bug is beyond me, and it is a constant pain in the butt when traveling. (Every single phone ever made can do this simple task, but it has managed to stump all of Microsoft's software engineers. Remarkable.)

What I have done:
Installed all updates - no beta drivers, no fast or slow ring.
Edited the registry to disable the lock screen (reg key: NoLockScreen).
Removed Windows Hello, rebooted, and set up Windows Hello again.
Removed AVG and used MS Defender instead.
Run the Windows Troubleshoot (Control Panel) for Hardware and Devices.

I do not know if the above steps were the cause of my SB functioning better, but for me the SB has finally (after 5 months) arrived at a state of reliability that I would call acceptable. It's pathetic that it took this long, and it could all go awry in a heartbeat (as it did after the 2/17/16 updates), but for now I'm cautiously satisfied.

 

[ncameron]

You might want to try the DISM rebuild process as well:

DISM Windows Rebuild News

 

[Niterider4]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm going to hold off on that for now because I have learned not to fix stuff that isn't broken. If my SB is working well now, I'm not going to muck around with it.

If I run into more problems, I will probably try the DISM rebuild process, but at this point I'm going to enjoy my fully functioning SB and wait and see.

 

[ncameron]

Fair enough; allegedly there will be a fast update for this one anyway...

 

[Niterider4]

Agreed. As long as I have acceptable reliability, I'm okay with waiting for Microsoft to fix the problems with the SB. Without basic reliability or functionality, obviously, the situation is different, and I would be doing (and have spent countless hours doing) whatever is necessary to get the damned thing to work. However, I have been impressed with Microsoft's efforts to deal with the various SB problems, so I am content to let them work away on fixes while I am able to work away on my SB.

Having said that, Microsoft does not get a pass from me on the whole SB launch. These problems should have been dealt with prior to the SB being sold to customers, and it is perfectly clear to me that Microsoft knew about most, if not all, of these issues when they made boastful claims about the SB and foisted it onto an unsuspecting public. In my mind, making claims that one knows to be false, in order to sell a product, is nothing less than fraud. These fixes are better late than never, but they should have never been late in the first place.

 

[Niterider4]

Naturally, I spoke too soon.

The most recent updates have resulted in my screen not auto-rotating when detached (after being perfect), Windows Hello working sporadically (again, after working perfectly), and display brightness spontaneously changing to 100% (despite whatever it is set to in settings).

Thanks again Microsoft, for making my work week just that much more difficult and frustrating.