touchscreen no longer responds

[jmain40]

I've been a happy owner of a Microsoft Surface (w/ keyboard), purchased in March of this year. A few months into using it, I began experiencing some touchscreen issues. The screen would become temporarily unresponsive after some moderately heavy usage, but it would always regain its capabilities within a few minutes of going ghost. Eventually it stopped responding to touch messages altogether and never regains its touch capacity.

I went through the steps on Windows support for troubleshooting a non-responsive touchscreen. None of it brought back the Surface Pro 7 responsiveness. What I did find is that there is a warning icon (exclamation mark in yellow triangle) on "Intel(R) Precise Touch Device" in Device Manager and "HID compliant touchscreen" is completely missing in DM. Devices and Printers in the Control Panel shows the same warning icon on my tablet. In the about this PC page it states, "No pen or touch input is available for this display".

I'm running 'Windows 10 Home 21H1'. The tablet has never been dropped or banged around, and it has not been wet; so, I am at a loss for what has caused the touchscreen to go unfunctional.

Anyone wise enough to guide me towards a working touchscreen would be much appreciated.

 

[sharpuser]

Have you tried a clean (factory level) install of Windows? OneDrive will have your files, and will restore them after you sign in to the reset PC.

The first step in this process to try is Reset my PC, “Keep my files option”.

if that doesn’t work, Reset my PC, “Remove everything” option.

 

[jmain40]

Hello Mr. Sharp,
I proceeded with both levels of resetting the PC, neither made touching the screen interact with the computer again.

I should have synced MS Edge with another PC to avoid losing a few passwords, but that's nothing major.

It looks as though I have nothing left to do than to exchange it for another device. I hope the warranty still allows for this.

 

[sharpuser]

Your touchscreen going out occasionally since you've owned the Surface probably indicates a hardware problem you've had since the beginning. I hope you get satisfaction out of a warranty.

 

[jmain40]

I got my replacement from Microsoft under warranty. I discovered/realized how the issue arose. While performing a group of updates from Windows update on my new device, the touchscreen went irresponsive; similar to the previous experience. The functionality came back once the updates were completed. What this reminded me of though was a problem I had with the original Surface tablet; during an update to 21H1 the device repeatedly stalled and Windows update became unresponsive. So I had to install the update manually to get it to complete all the way. It was after several of these updates that the touchscreen became permanently unresponsive. So, let's just hope that this new device doesn't suffer from the same update plight. It is currently running 20H2 without problem.