Surface Pro 7 shutting down randomly

I'm a longtime user of a Surface Pro 4 at my office. I really liked it, so I purchased a Surface Pro 7 (i7/16GB/256GB) for personal use about a week or two ago. Experienced NO issues while it's been plugged in. Immediately noticed problems when on battery though, as the screen would go black (experiencing an unexpected shutdown) within 1-2 minutes of inactivity. Occasionally the screen would just freeze and the Surface would need to be force restarted by holding down its power button for a while.

Here's my troubleshooting so far:

1. Updated all firmware, drivers, and Windows updates. No change to behavior.
2. Changed the power settings within the Settings app. No change to behavior.
3. Created a new power plan with various power settings. No change to behavior.
4. Disconnected the Type Cover. No change to behavior.
5. Tried to reset my Surface PC several times from Settings > Recovery. Only received a "There was a problem resetting your PC" message.
   • a. Ran "sfc /scannow" on the system. Surprisingly, problem files were found and fixed. No effect on the reset though.
   • b. Tried resetting a different Surface Pro 7 (same i7 model) and had no problems, so I concluded this issue could be unique to my machine.
6. Created a recovery USB for the Surface Pro 7 using the image downloaded from this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surfacerecoveryimage.
   • a. Booted the USB drive manually from the BIOS and recovered the Surface. No change to behavior.
   • b. Updated all firmware, drivers, and Windows updates after recovery. No change to behavior.
   • c. Tried resetting the computer again from the Settings > Recovery menu. Still wouldn't reset... (Odd.)
7. Ran the recovery USB install a second time. Did not connect to the Internet during setup this time. No change to behavior.
8. Watched it shut down again on battery power enough times that I got fed up with it and left it unplugged overnight.
   • a. Woke up to an empty battery. That just seems wrong to me...
9. Since it was recharging, tested the problem at various battery levels. No change to behavior.
10. Tested the issue on my wife's new Surface Pro 7 (i5/8GB/256GB) purchased 2 months before mine. It didn't experience the problem! (Lucky.)
11. Created a disk image of my wife's Surface Pro 7 and restored the disk image (including recovery partitions) to my Surface Pro 7. No change to behavior (It still shut down unexpectedly on battery.)
    • a. Tried resetting the computer yet again from the Settings > Recovery menu. It reset this time! Started wondering if there are issues with Microsoft's recovery image...
    • b. Set up the newly reset Windows installation without an Internet connection. No change to behavior.
12. Downloaded the latest Surface Pro 7 drivers (18362) from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=100419on a desktop PC and placed on a USB drive.
    • a. Installed the firmware/drivers from the USB drive and restarted. No change to behavior.

There was ONE thing that resolved the behavior for me, but it is purely a workaround and NOT A SOLUTION:

• 13. Removed "Modern Standby" features and created a new (non-balanced) power plan. Here's how:
  • a. Opened the Registry Editor and navigated to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power".
  • b. Changed the "CsEnabled" value from '1' to '0'. Clicked OK and restarted the Surface Pro.
  • c. Created a new power plan using one of the newly available plan options. I chose "High performance" and didn't bother changing any of its settings.

Whenever my Surface Pro 7 is using the custom plan, it doesn't crash anymore, but you lose the battery power features (when you click on the battery icon in the system tray) and the ability to quick wake from sleep (back to using the power button). I can still swap between the custom plan and the default "Balanced" plan too. The "Balanced" plan restores the battery power settings and quick wake, but the unexpected crashes return alongside it.

Since the behavior can be changed, this leads me to believe that the underlying issue is most likely related to firmware/drivers rather than the hardware itself (though I admit that this doesn't fully explain why my wife's Surface Pro 7 works and mine doesn't). That being said, I thought I was buying a portable device, so this problem really needs to be fixed soon or I plan to return my Surface Pro 7 while I still can.

TL;DR -- I did a bunch of stuff and none of it fixed the problem. Found a potential workaround by disabling modern standby and creating a new power plan. We still need an actual fix ASAP.

This fix worked for me and has continued working for weeks now without issue.  Thanks so much for figuring this out.

I strongly encourage you to use the fix identified on this thread that has been working for most of us:

"I've fixed it on my SP7 i5/8G/256G by installing the Intel Graphics Command Center from the Microsoft Store, opening it, going to System>Power>Panel Self Refresh and turning it off for both "On Battery" and "Plugged In"."

Or -

Initiate a Support Ticket through the Microsoft website.  It is under warranty and you will receive a replacement!

I also was helped by installing the Intel Graphics Command Center.

Did that yesterday and need to do some more testing to be sure but - so far so good...

Great if the Microsoft Surface Team can validate and do some testing and come back with a clear answer.

Fingers crossed!

//Joakim

for the moment the change via the Intel Graphics Adapter seems to help - will have to test more, whether that keeps it fine.

I strongly encourage you to use the fix identified on this thread that has been working for most of us:

"I've fixed it on my SP7 i5/8G/256G by installing the Intel Graphics Command Center from the Microsoft Store, opening it, going to System>Power>Panel Self Refresh and turning it off for both "On Battery" and "Plugged In"."

Or -

Initiate a Support Ticket through the Microsoft website.  It is under warranty and you will receive a replacement!