Surface Pro issues - day 1

[jmister]

I was so excited that my 128 GB pro arrived yesterday at Staples. I immediately began playing with it, hooked it up to the campus Wi-fi and everything seemed to work fine. I installed a few programs (chrome, firefox, dropbox, etc...)

A few hours later at home, problems began. I noticed the wifi would be "limited" so I found the supposed fix of unchecking the box that allows the wireless chip to sleep when on battery. Then I installed the 16 Microsoft updates. Now the real problems began...any time I pressed the power button to turn the screen off, I could not turn it back on again without hard resetting (power button for 5 seconds)!

This was not acceptable, so I "refreshed" the surface pro. While this seemed to fix the hard reset issue, I continued to have wi-fi problems even with the fix in place. It seems the home page will load quickly but then the next page I go to will either load after ~5 seconds of "Waiting for...." or not load at all and I'll get a network error. I know the wi-fi works properly with other devices on the router. I figured this may be a software error in Win 8, but have not found a fix.

And finally, last night when I shut the screen off with 50% battery, it was too low in battery to power on in the morning 9 hours later!! So that's been my experience with the surface pro thus far. I have been trying it out as a replacement for a 2.5 year old Macbook Pro but so far I am less than enthused about it. I'm hoping it is just a flawed unit, and am eager to try another because this little thing really does have great potential!

 

[souldier]

I haven't experienced any such of those problems with wifi, pressing the power button. I do notice that the pro drains quite a bit while on sleep mode, so that's why you weren't able to power it on in the morning. The surface is still highly active even while in sleep, so even if you press the windows capacitive button, it will react. When I sleep at night, I just hibernate or turn off the pro completely. When in hibernate, the pro doesn't drain battery at all

 

[stringbeanie]

I was so excited that my 128 GB pro arrived yesterday at Staples. I immediately began playing with it, hooked it up to the campus Wi-fi and everything seemed to work fine. I installed a few programs (chrome, firefox, dropbox, etc...)

My surface pro works perfectly but I had another brand new laptop running windows 8 that I installed chrome on and it became unresponsive in every way. It was working perfect before I installed chrome. I ended up doing a full restore on that computer and left chrome off. It's back to working great again. I don't think chrome plays well with windows 8. Truly, when I said unresponsive, I mean wi-fi and everything. It was an unusable computer when chrome was on it. Good luck!

 

[souldier]

That's pretty strange too. I have google chrome installed on my desktop but am not experiencing such issues. I use it once in a while when I need to do certain things that don't seem to work properly on IE.

 

[jomon]

My advise is to exchange yours immediately. I had issues with my PRO on day one too and it turned out to be a pretty big hardware issue. The SSD failed after 14 days!!

 

[jmister]

Thanks for the advice guys. I am going to return it today and hope they have a new one in stock!

I'll definitely change the power options to hibernate much sooner since it drains that much battery in sleep mode.

 

[J515OP]

I know the wi-fi works properly with other devices on the router. I figured this may be a software error in Win 8, but have not found a fix.

I think you are pretty much covered by the responses given. I will note though that just because other devices are working properly on wifi doesn't mean that the wifi/router/network is working properly. Many people make this assumption and over look simple network fixes because "other devices are working fine."

 

[jmister]

I think you are pretty much covered by the responses given. I will note though that just because other devices are working properly on wifi doesn't mean that the wifi/router/network is working properly. Many people make this assumption and over look simple network fixes because "other devices are working fine."

Thanks for the input. What settings should I look to possibly change?

 

[J515OP]

Make sure your firmware is updated, the type of encryption can vary depending on device requirements (e.g. WEP, WPA), power cycle the router (power off for 30 seconds and then back on) to refresh the system/IPs. These are the basics but it only takes a couple of minutes and that way you can eliminate the wifi router as a source of potential issues.

 

[souldier]

You'll notice the hibernate option is no longer included. you'll want to search up on how to get it back. Once you do that, you can set it so that when you press the power button, the surface hibernates which is what I did

Thanks for the advice guys. I am going to return it today and hope they have a new one in stock!

I'll definitely change the power options to hibernate much sooner since it drains that much battery in sleep mode.

 

[Kiwibru]

The other option would be to TURN OFF the Pro by going from the Metro desktop to the right side options screen, Settings, Power and Shut Down.
As the Pro boots in less than ten seconds this is actually a smarter way to make sure the system is really off and no battery leakage is happening.

 

[Drexx3]

Interesting. The other day I charged my Pro overnight after doing a shut down. It was plugged in for about 8 hours. I unplugged it the next morning and brought it to work with me. Didn't have a chance to use it at all until I got home. Fired it up and the first thing I did was check the battery out of curiosity and it was at 96%.