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A few months back I purchased the new Surface Book 2 for a bit over 3,000 EUR. I had high hopes that as Microsoft knows this hardware inside out (just like Apple does with their MacBooks) I would not anymore have to go through the usual driver issues and what not but instead have a nice, reliable machine at hand that would make my everyday work life easier, not harder.
1. Sleep of Death
Before my holiday I then started using my old Dell notebook again, as there was no way, I could put this 3,000 EUR Surface Book 2 to hibernate (or sleep! - both did actually not work) without having to do press the power button thereafter for 20 sec or so and hardresetting the thing to wake up. It seemed to be the (what seems to be quite common actually!) sleep of death issue. In light of the many users seeming to have the same issues I was hoping Microsoft would get on to a firmware update during my vacation and all would be solved upon my return. In fact, after my return this morning there were about 20 or so updates that got installed after I powered the SB2 up, amongst them a firmware update.
2. Laptop Bricked after Update - for good!
After installing and restarting I then had this issue: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfbook2-surfupdate/surface-book-2-bricked-after-latest-firmware/06fb11b2-4eb2-4141-9cd1-1e02d54afd78 - A blue screen with a prompt to enter the BitLocker key. Well, I looked it up and seemed to have recovered the key in my MS account (luckily! as other users seemed not to be so lucky as can be read in the link above). The (almost funny by now) thing is, that my keyboard does not work. My touchpad works just fine, I can "change keyboard layout" or "skip this drive" (obviously of little use, as this drive is my system drive with my Windows installation on it). But when I click into the blank field to enter the key, my keyboard does not respond at all and I cannot enter a key.
3. Excel Pixelated Issue with Surface Dock
Did I already mention how much I like the idea to have my two 1080p monitors hooked up to my laptop via Surface Dock with just one magnetic cable? Well, Excel becomes almost unreadable and in general the (text) image quality is poor compared to my old Dell, which has a HDMI and a Mini Display port so that I can hook up the two displays directly. This is sad...
Microsoft, seriously? I had such high hopes that (after investing 3,000 EUR) I would finally get a machine that would give me the same reliability as my Mac Book Pro. You cannot ask these prices, offer a super fancy top of the nodge notebook and then have issues like this. I mean, my laptop is bricked! I am having nothing but issues with the thing, can't even close the lid (to slee or hibernate) without recovering all my files as the bloody thing goes into a sleep of death. WTF is wrong with this thing ... I thought the old days of bootable CDs (or USB sticks nowaday) were kind of over by now... especially after paying this price!
Any ideas how to get around this w/o investing half a day to re-install Windows and all my programs?
Had I not started to like the new Windows 10 and have many programs that need Win, I think I'd already be back to a Mac Book.
Thanks for your help in advance.
Moved from: Windows 10 / Windows update, recovery, & backup
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
The Surface BitLocker Protector Check tool is now available to verify that the BitLocker settings are properly configured on your Surface Book 2 13” NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 and to help ensure that future updates go smoothly on your device.
For more information, please view our Known issues and additional information about Surface Book 2 article.
Updated 11/2/2018
And yet Microsoft remains silent to this post. What is going on?
For all my fellow sufferers who have apparently also wasted their money, there is a "solution" or better, a "workaround". If you detach the screen before powering up the device, you can actually boot the tablet. And then once it did boot, you can put it back onto the keyboard to use it as a laptop. Wonderful usability.
Microsoft, please can you come back to us with a solution and finally provide the patches that make this actually very neat concept of the surface book work?
Thanks!
Same problem happened to me - blue screen prompts for bitlocker key after installing updates and rebooting. I was not aware of bitlocker before, certainly did not activate it. Since I did not enable bitlocker myslef I don't have the key.
I tried the workaround suggest by Bubi1090, detaching the screen while powered off and booting the tablet - unfortunately doesn't work for me. The tablet shows again the blue screen asking for the bitlocker key.
Any other ideas that can help preventing loosing the information I have on my surface book 2?
Hi, try to look it up in your MS account, if you have one. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026181/windows-10-find-my-bitlocker-recovery-key That worked for me.
I tried my MS account, but not luck (my Surface book was not linked to a MS account), and since I did not enabled/activated Bitlocker (installing an update did), I don't have the key. Any idea why detaching the screen worked for you and others, but not for me (I get the blue Bitlocker screen with the screen detached) ? any other suggestions?
The situation is VERY annoying - Microsoft should take responsibility! If the Surface book comes with Bitlocker enabled, Microsoft should have warned the users the moment they first started the machine, prompting them to save/write down their Bitlocker key (or disable it, which is what I would have probably done). Any user that actively enables Bitlocker is warned to write down (or save in any other way) the key. This is not the case with Microsoft updates that cause bitlocker to be "activated" without giving the user a chance to even know what the key is. Now my surface is locked, I cannot work, not to mentioned the data and files I am going to lose.
This works btw for anyone who is having this issue
