Surface Pro 2 - Surface cover telemetry driver / blank screen after putting tablet to sleep

Anonymous
2013-10-23T05:19:56+00:00

Hi, 

I just picked up my Surface Pro 2 256GB today and it ran into problems right after applying the firmware update that seemed to have been released just today on Windows Update.  I confirmed this problem was caused by the firmware update because I restored the tablet and the wireless was working fine and I applied the firmware update and that broke the wireless.

After the update, the Marvell AVASTAR Wireless Composite Device stopped working...meaning, the tablet does not recognize the wireless card.  This is confirmed by going into the Device Manager and seeing 2 unknown devices (one of them was the wireless card, the other unrecognized device I will explain in the next paragraph) When I tried running the update driver function, it tried to reinstall the driver but returned the following error.

Windows encountered a problem installing the driver software for your device

Reinstall the drivers for this device (Code 18)

I had to go the manual route and there were 2 Marvell drivers listed and one Microsoft driver listed for the Marvell card.  The 2 marvell drivers listed had exactly the same name.  However, only choosing and applying the second one worked.  So, the wireless was working again.

The other "unknown device" turned out to be something called "Surface Cover Telemetry".  However, trying the same troubleshooting process for the wireless card did not solve the problem and the devices still remains "unknown" in the device manager.  I just left it and carried on with installing my other software and apps as the tablet and the Type Cover 2 seemed to be functioning properly.

However, when I put the tablet to sleep by closing the Type Cover (while on battery power but charged up to 100%), the screen remained blank even though I opened up the cover again and tried to wake the tablet.  I knew that the tablet was still on but the screen remained blank even after I tried touching it, typing on the keyboard as well as briefly tapping the on/off button.  When I touch the Windows icon on the bottom frame of the tablet, I can feel a slight vibration and that told me that the tablet was on but the screen somehow is totally off.

I decided to do a soft reset of the tablet by holding on the on/off button for more then 10 seconds.  However, the screen only worked properly after many attempts.

My questions are, could it be that this "unknown device" that needs the "Surface Cover Telemetry" driver is causing this blank screen problem?  And if so, where can I download a driver that works?

Thanks.

Surface | Surface Pro | Install and update

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-12-13T03:38:12+00:00

    "Yep - just rest to factory while cover attached then updated then rebooted and all is well.  there is still an unknown driver in the Other section  though."

    OMG - why is there still unknown drivers......

    I wish they would fix this mess

    I cant trust any upgrades till they do :¬(

    For me Unknown drivers meant "Battery Drain" god knows why :¬(

    Well I've said this before. Microsoft isn't going to release an update to patch a 5GB image to resolve the unknown driver issues. At the moment the only way to "permanently" get rid of these issues is to update the recovery image itself. My drivers in device manager are 100% perfect after running through the steps in the link below and resetting my device (which isn't a hassle at all because all my Surface Pro 2 settings are saved on Skydive). The whole process took me 25 minutes.

    http://systemsadminguy.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/how-to-update-surface-pro-2-recovery-image-drivers/

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-12T16:24:32+00:00

    "Yep - just rest to factory while cover attached then updated then rebooted and all is well.  there is still an unknown driver in the Other section  though."

    OMG - why is there still unknown drivers......

    I wish they would fix this mess

    I cant trust any upgrades till they do :¬(

    For me Unknown drivers meant "Battery Drain" god knows why :¬(

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-11T16:02:52+00:00

    For me too, the new December firmware fixed the problem. If it can help others, my Touch Cover was connected when I applied it. 

    Eric

    Yep - just rest to factory while cover attached then updated then rebooted and all is well.  there is still an unknown driver in the Other section  though.

    Hope all is stable and well...time will tell.

    Thanks :)

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-11T14:32:03+00:00

    For me too, the new December firmware fixed the problem. If it can help others, my Touch Cover was connected when I applied it. 

    [EDIT - more info]

    I did not reset my device (factory reset) before applying the update. I had not tried applying any "major" manual fixes, like resetting and manually applying a patch, nor modifying the factory image, for fear it would prevent a "legitimate" fix from working.

    I didn't want to re-install everything and trusted MS would provide a solution without this reset. I only applied the update along all the others available, it took about 15 minutes and after a final reboot, everthing looked fine. There are no unknown devices appearing now., the Surface cover telemetry one is where it should belong, in the System devices section.

    So for me, everything is now running perfectly fine.

    Eric

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