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
    2013-11-03T22:35:26+00:00

    had the same problem after October firmware update.  Tried several different methods and this is what worked for me FINALLY:

    First, a caveat: Many have suggested going to device manager and rolling back the drivers to the old one (or uninstalling/deleting the driver and rescanning, which does the same thing).  Unfortunately, this only is temporary until you try to update again.

    What worked:

    (0) Go ahead and install all other Windows Update including the firmware update.  When you can't get past the "Please wait while we install a system update" screen, force restart (it was tricky for me but sometimes it was a combination of holding the power button down, using the volume up and/or down buttons).

    (1) Go to Microsoft's official website and manually download the October 2013 Surface Pro Firmware Update.  Extract them from the ZIP archive to a folder of your choice.

    (2) In device manager, rollback the drivers for anything showing the yellow triangle as not having installed correctly (for me, this was system aggregator and UEFI.  They will temporarily now show as not having any problem.

    (3) Click update drivers, but DON'T let it search automatically.  Manually point it to the folder you extracted to.  Do this for both UEFI and System aggregator.

    (4) Restart.

    (5) It went through the update (let it finish...even though it looks like it stalled again, give it a few minutes--mine took only 5 minutes).

    (6) It restarted and it looked like a few devices temporarily didn't work and the UEFI was still showing the yellow triangle.  After everything is loaded, restart it again.  It will go through another quick setup and then everything was fine and Windows Update shows "System Firmware update" as successfully installed now.

    A combination of "advanced google use", luck, and trial and error finally worked.  There was a Russian page I had Google translate that helped somewhat including the methods on forums such as these.  The most helpful results were returned when searching for:

    [surface pro 2 firmware "please wait while we install a system update"]

    and expanding on some of the answers.microsoft.com results as well.

    I hope this helps someone, good luck!!!

    :)

    Question:  I'm not doubting what you have written at all.  Just want to know in Step 0, when you can't get past the "Please wait while we install a system update", what are you doing to force this message?  I can produce this same messaging condition only if I try to do something during the update process... If I let it sit and run by itself, the drivers load, the messages do not occur...

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-03T22:15:31+00:00

    had the same problem after October firmware update.  Tried several different methods and this is what worked for me FINALLY:

    First, a caveat: Many have suggested going to device manager and rolling back the drivers to the old one (or uninstalling/deleting the driver and rescanning, which does the same thing).  Unfortunately, this only is temporary until you try to update again.

    What worked:

    (0) Go ahead and install all other Windows Update including the firmware update.  When you can't get past the "Please wait while we install a system update" screen, force restart (it was tricky for me but sometimes it was a combination of holding the power button down, using the volume up and/or down buttons).

    (1) Go to Microsoft's official website and manually download the October 2013 Surface Pro Firmware Update.  Extract them from the ZIP archive to a folder of your choice.

    (2) In device manager, rollback the drivers for anything showing the yellow triangle as not having installed correctly (for me, this was system aggregator and UEFI.  They will temporarily now show as not having any problem.

    (3) Click update drivers, but DON'T let it search automatically.  Manually point it to the folder you extracted to.  Do this for both UEFI and System aggregator.

    (4) Restart.

    (5) It went through the update (let it finish...even though it looks like it stalled again, give it a few minutes--mine took only 5 minutes).

    (6) It restarted and it looked like a few devices temporarily didn't work and the UEFI was still showing the yellow triangle.  After everything is loaded, restart it again.  It will go through another quick setup and then everything was fine and Windows Update shows "System Firmware update" as successfully installed now.

    A combination of "advanced google use", luck, and trial and error finally worked.  There was a Russian page I had Google translate that helped somewhat including the methods on forums such as these.  The most helpful results were returned when searching for:

    [surface pro 2 firmware "please wait while we install a system update"]

    and expanding on some of the answers.microsoft.com results as well.

    I hope this helps someone, good luck!!!

    :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-02T15:29:38+00:00

    here exactly the same problem. Hope Microsoft solve this problem asap.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-11-02T13:15:16+00:00

    I also did a reset last night and did not install the firmware update and so far so good.  no crash after a night of sleep/hibernate.

    Same here, no crash after a night of sleep/hibernate.

    Next step installing firmware update and see if the problem comes back.

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