Surface Pro 4 "Plugged in, Not Charging"

Same problem.

At least every few days I will notice that my SP4 is half drained. Unplugging it and plugging it back in usually restarts the charging process, but this is a serious and stupid bug on Microsoft's part.  

This wasn't how it behaved when I first purchased it a year ago, but I can't recall when it first started happening. It seems to be getting increasingly frequent.

I have been facing this issue for a year.  After I first bought my Surface it happened several times.  The issue fixed itself and after rounds with support they said they would probably have a patch.  As I would have to travel to Hong Kong to return and then wait for a new one I decided to see if Microsoft would fix the issue or at least let us know if they found the root cause.  Suddenly after 10 months the issue returned and it doesnt seem to fix itself.

Disappointed with Microsoft.  Great product but follow up is terrible.

Chris,

All I know is that during the two times I've attempted a factory restore from the mains I've ended up with a blank screen and had to reset. The system then reloads to the previous installed version.

My instinct suggests this is due to an excess power demand that should be briefly topped up by the battery, but I could be wrong. Maybe this symptom points to something else? Sometimes when using Windows normally with mains only (since the battery stopped charging) the system crashes to the blank screen.

I'd be interested to know if you've had the same experience.

Many thanks,

Andy

Hello again Andy,

Sorry for the month long delay in updating this thread.  I had to delay any further investigation into this problem until I was able to setup another development laptop with everything I need on it as I was heavily reliant on my Surface for doing development work.

Anyway, I tried doing a full recovery this weekend from the recovery partition (which had been automatically updated to the Fall Creators Update image).  I didn't have the same problem with the power cutting out part way through as you had, but something that might be of interest/be related is that when I'm running off my normal surface mains cable, my surface will sometimes just lose power for no reason and completely die (because the battery is fu@#ed).  Usually, when I'm at home I have it connected to the Surface Pro 4 dock which has a much beefier connection cable, so maybe this does a better job of supplying constant power to the surface?  Might be worth picking up a dock if you have good money after bad to throw at your surface!

But the important information is that a full re-build didn'f fix the battery issue.  After going through the post recovery setup wizard I logged on and had the same problem, so this is definately a hardware problem on my Surface Pro 4.  Given this, I've just decided to reluctantly hand-over £400 to Microsoft for a refurb swap-out.  I'm pretty hacked off, as this is clearly a problem with their manufacturing of the Surface given how many issues that have been reported in these forums.  When the Xbox 360 red-ring of death fiasco happened, Microsoft swapped out of warranty Xbox 360's for free.  they should do this for Surface Pro 4 as well I beleieve.  The only alternative was for me to just keep the thing plugged into the wall all the time, which wasn't really an acceptable option when you've shelled out £2,100 on a "portable" tablet.

Cheers for now,

Chris.

I have this problem too from time to time, but if you unplug and plug back in, it seems to clear up.