Surface Book Taskbar Previews close too quickly (when battery status updates)

Anonymous
2016-02-02T02:09:06+00:00

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:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_7-desktop/taskbar-thumbnail-preview-disappear-too-quickly-to/b0aeb6e1-ba60-4caa-a09a-19ce4d3b3dc8

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?

Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-11-17T04:44:19+00:00

    Steve,

    I'm pretty sure the problem is not "A spurious signal from defective power supplies". My Surface Book shows this problem on pure DC power from the (huge) batteries in my off-grid house.

    If it sees 15 Volts like Microsoft's 65 Watt power brick provides, the charging circuit can keep up with most CPU loads, and only rarely switches among batteries "charging" or "fully charged" or "in use". If the Surface batteries are really low, it seems easier for the system to show them as "charging" consistently. As the supply voltage drops or the CPU load increases or the Surface batteries get almost full, the state transitions get more frequent.

    Right now, if I open the battery display and leave my mouse stationary, both batteries show "fully charged" constantly. Mouse over the tray icon for a minimized Explorer window and it hits one of the batteries. Wait for both to return to "fully charged", and mouse over the icon for Firefox - it hits both batteries. Position the pointer over a taskbar icon, wait for "fully charged", and then move the mouse to show the preview - the sudden CPU load hits both batteries and closes the preview!

    The real problem here is that changes in charging state hide the taskbar previews. This has been happening since Win 7 came out, on many brands of notebook with totally different power bricks and charging voltages. Microsoft chose to blame the other vendors, and never fixed the real problem.

    Since it seems they are unwilling or unable to fix the real problem, providing a 15 Volt power supply to affected users would be Microsoft's quickest way to reduce (but not eliminate) the appearance of the problem. I wish you luck with that! But I'm pretty sure all you need as data is whether a user has the 12 Volt or 15 Volt supply. Any 12 Volt supply (at least in my experience) will trigger lots of disappearing taskbar previews.

    Loren

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-11-16T11:31:33+00:00

    All,

    This bug is caused by your power supply. You need to get it replaced.

    See:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1293973/Bad%20Surface%20Power%20Supplies%20Cause%20Thumbnail%20Previews%20to%20Disappear.docx

    If you have this bug, please post the serial number of your power supply to the thread below, so that we can include it in the above document for Microsoft.

    Also, take your old power supply to a Microsoft Store, give them the above document, and demand a replacement.

    Note that we're not certain yet if some subset of power supplies being manufactured today by Microsoft is still bad.

    For follow-up, I recommend posting to this larger, very active thread:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_10-desktop/windows-10-taskbar-thumbnails-preview-keep/c74dfbe8-db09-4d5f-b7a2-f7a2f0fc7da4?page=19

    Thanks,

    Steve

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T14:35:31+00:00

    Yes, same behavior on SP4, issue occurs if (1) powered in dock or (2) powered directly with power cord. 

    Unplug or remove from dock and issue disappears. 

    Why is this so difficult for Microsoft to resolve?  It's been going on for so long now. 

    Bill

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T14:35:13+00:00

    Getting a replacement is probably impossible for me, I got this surface on a travel to the us 4 months ago.

    I hope is a software problem :/

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T14:26:57+00:00

    Not Just docked for SB.  Anytime power is applied, either docked, or undocked.  Never the issue when running on battery.

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