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
    2016-10-04T20:29:47+00:00

    Me too. I have the same problem with my Surface Pro 4. Really frustrating.

    I contacted Microsoft support (in Italy) that has reproduced the error and told me 

    that will report the issue to the next level of assistance.

    I hope in a fix soon...

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-10-07T02:45:57+00:00

    Since all the latest updates were already installed and the problem is still occurring, we recommend that you contact our Answer Desk for further assistance with either repair or replacement process.

    Let us know if you have further concerns.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-10-07T16:34:10+00:00

    This issue isn't about a defective product. Is a general Surface Pro 4 bug that require to be corrected by Microsoft.

    In our office we have 4 Surface Pro 4 (i7) and all have the problem. And I contacted Microsoft support (in Italy) that has reproduced the error.

    The steps to reproduce the problem are:

    1. Charge the Surface to 100%.
    2. If the Surface is off, power on and wait 10 minutes (sometimes the problem doesn't occur in the first minutes)
    3. Open some application. Rollover and remain with the mouse over one application icon on the taskbar.
    4. The preview image appear and after some time (from 1 sec to 15 sec, changes from time to time) the preview disappears.

    Thank you for help.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-10-10T13:54:47+00:00

    Hi Guia,

    Thanks for the heads up and the link for updates.  We suffer from the same issue on the Surface Pro 4 and the updates didn't resolve it.  We're trying hard to work together on this, but since the problem has been present for most of this year, it's becoming increasingly frustrating, particularly when there are continued recommendations to swap out devices for others that will have the exact same problem.

    We bought five Surface Pro 4 devices as a pilot program to evaluate deployment in our organization.  I can confirm that 4 of them have this issue.  The fifth is almost always used unplugged, so the person using it hasn't reported the same problem, but more than likely would see the same symptoms.  My opinion is that the issue is pervasive, and I can't recommend moving beyond the pilot program until it's resolved.

    Best regards,

    Chris

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-10-10T21:26:21+00:00

    Wow this is so annoying. I though it was some Windows bug

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