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
    2016-08-30T20:45:05+00:00

    Seriously.  There are so many reasons why I like my Surface Pro 4, but it drives me crazy that this issue persists.  Please Microsoft, remember that the "little things" really do matter.  (And this isn't all that little - it's basic functionality)

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-18T20:36:25+00:00

    Still no fix for this one? It is really annoying.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-06-01T07:36:24+00:00

    We get this too on surface pro 4s. Our company has several of these device and all seem to do it on power, but on battery its ok. It's very annoying!

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-05-30T22:56:16+00:00

    Here is a video I made to document the issue

    https://youtu.be/53lTt55wOPQ

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-05-26T14:47:39+00:00

    I've got the same problem on the Surface Pro 4. As others have said, this only happens when the power cable is plugged in and the battery is full. It is one of the few things I really hate about this device. Please fix!

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