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
    2016-11-08T07:57:40+00:00

    Just curious - are they shipping the 15 Volt power supplies with the SP4's now? (You have to read the barely visible fine print on the back to tell...) I think the Surface Book always got the 15 Volt brick, but it uses more power and needs it. For a long time the SP models got a 12V supply which was much more likely to trigger the problem.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-11-08T00:11:20+00:00

    My replacement SP4 does not have this issue -  either the update fix it or the newer devices do not have the problem.

    My old SP4 before the replacement had the issue before,  but was fixed after a recent update. So I think this could be fixed by software - apparently this has not worked for everybody. If you guys still have the problem, maybe a replacement would be your best fix.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-11-07T17:43:55+00:00

    Hi Guia,

    All updates are installed, and I'm seeing the same issue.

    Best regards,

    Chris

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-11-02T11:17:30+00:00

    Hi Guia,

    In my Surface Pro 4 I have the October 28 update (KB3197954 and KB3199986) but still have the problem.

    Thank you for help.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-11-01T21:28:13+00:00

    I installed these plus KB 3197954 and more on Oct 28, and still have the same problem:

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