Need a Fix for Battery Drain Problem on Surface?
This is the promised followup to our post on Rolling Back Windows Updates. I think by now, everyone has heard about the problems with the last Microsoft update for Surface 2s. Namely, the update seemed to have caused problems with the Surface battery charge, as well as wake up problems. We too, have experienced these issues. For us, the Surface Pro 2 would wake itself up about every hour or so, and then the battery would not recharge fully. So, it seemed we were always running out of juice.
Microsoft has pulled the firmware update that seemed to cause the problem and there are a number of workarounds floating around the internet. We tried them all and we’ll describe the one that worked for us here. Please note, however, that although we can charge the battery fully now, our Surface Pro 2 still wakes on its own – just not as often. It could be that we still have a rogue application out there that’s causing an occasional wake-up, but we’ve not tracked it down yet. As it is right now, our Surface Pro 2, wakes itself up maybe 2-3 per day but this does not drain the battery.
So, here are the steps we took to get the Surface battery life back, at a high level:
- Download firmware (hardware) and drivers going back to October and extract them to a USB Drive. You can find them here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=40856.
- Backup everything on your Surface, see instructions in our post How can I backup my Surface?
- Reset Surface Pro, see Microsoft instructions here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/refresh-or-reset-surface
- After first boot, go to Device Manager and update the firmware to the one just downloaded.
- While we were at it, we updated all drivers the same way. Might as well.
The above steps brought our Surface’s battery life back to normal. So, that’s the only fix for battery drain problem on Surface that we found to reliably work. But as I said, we have no idea why the darn thing still wakes itself up occasionally. But since it’s not causing us any major issues, we’re happy.
You may also like our posts on Surface Accessories and What to Do If Your Surface Is Running Slow.
Joanna-
