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Sometimes when I hover over a Taskbar Preview of an open window, it stays visible until I click it or move the cursor somewhere else. Sometimes it just disappears almost instantly, while I'm still trying to see what it shows. I've discovered what triggers the sudden closing:
As you can see in one of the lower reports, my charger is active. But every few seconds, the top line changes to "Not charging", one of the batteries changes to "in use", and then the top line says "Calculating", and then finally they all agree both batteries are charging. Every cycle of this closes any open Taskbar Previews!
It happens most frequently when the batteries are almost fully charged. Sometimes, probably depending on the CPU load, it keeps happening for hours when the batteries should be fully charged. Unplug the charger and it never happens (that I've noticed).
There are several threads, going back to Win7, describing similar issues with power management and Taskbar Preview. Like:
But those are with third-party power managers for other brands of notebook, with control settings I don't have. I have Microsoft's own flagship Surface Book - how can it be that this relatively ancient problem plagues the interaction between Microsoft hardware and software?
Has anyone found a solution other than running on battery?
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.
I had all the right drivers and have continued to update. But the problem persists - the @#$% thumbnails just disappear really quickly (will happen for a "stack" of open e-mails too when there are too many thumbnails to display). Still feels power related
Microsoft - Are you guys not seeing this across the board on Surface Pro 4s with Windows 10? Its a major usability issue. Please assist / advise?!?
Grassr00t,
Does the Surface Pro 4 use the new 15 Volt charger like the Surface Book? Or the older 12 Volt design? I find the problem is worse when using a 12 Volt "car" charger. It tends to stay in the "not quite sure it is charged" state longer than the official 15 Volt supply. With 15 Volts I eventually get through that and the status stops cycling.
I have this exact same issue but on a Surface Pro 4. It is driving me crazy as I cannot really use the Surface unless I am unplugged. If I unplug the taskbar preview works just fine but as soon as I plug in boom it starts again. I do not even have time to try and pick a preview as it disappears too fast.
JAM_989,
I believe your suggestions improved some other issues, but the main problem remains...
I performed 1-3 precisely by the clock. Without pressing #4, the system started itself in "Surface UEFI". Everything looked reasonable so I tapped Exit. It restarted normally, but much faster than it has for weeks - since about the "November update".
The Battery panel now sits solidly on "Fully charged", no more "Not Charging" or "Calculating" (so far...) Both batteries remain at "100%" instead of 98 or 99, but they both cycle between "fully charged" and "in use" - and close any Taskbar Previews when they change. So I continued with your suggestions:
After the restart I checked Device Manager again, and each battery said a restart was needed "to install hardware changes". So I restarted yet again, and now they seem content.
Unfortunately, both batteries still cycle between full and in-use, and zap my Previews as frequently as before.
So the first two-button shutdown has cured the strange and contradictory messages I used to see in the Battery panel, and cut cold boot time at least in half. Welcome improvements. But the ancient problem of battery manager actions closing Taskbar Previews remains.
Tried hiding the Battery tray icon, didn't help. Why does changing its displayed information grab focus away from my cursor? If I keep the cursor moving over the Taskbar icon, the Previews jump right back after disappearing for a second, but that is hardly a solution.
There is another maddening focus/visibility issue on this machine. If I receive an error doing a file copy in Explorer, the error dialog appears at the very bottom of the window stack, instead of at the top. And there is no audio alert, no way to know there was a reason for the failed action. To see the options the dialog usually presents, I must manually close each window above the dialog. And this always seems to happen when there are a dozen or more...
I'm also curious if this battery issue might be related to my other nagging Surface Book problem:
http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/1fd217b1-82c6-44df-955f-4ab142b2ec89
When that problem happens, I see System, PID 4, with the thread "ACPI.sys+0x1f9c0" using all of the CPU. When the problem is not happening, that thread exists but typically shows no CPU usage. I guess that's a stretch, but when I was reinstalling the battery drivers, there were lots of ACPI items shown... I'll be watching to see if it changes.
Hello LorenAmelang,
I would recommend trying the two-button shutdown to reset the battery chip:
Then you can reinstall the battery drivers from the Device Manager:
If the issue happens after this, you can also use the driver pack to make sure that the drivers are truly reinstalled correctly. The file needed is SurfaceBook_Win10_151216_1.msi.
Best Regards
