Plugged in, not charging and if I unplug that AC adapter, it turns off

Dave JohnC

was your surface working on battery power  without the need for the power lead plugged in  before this update ?

Sonny/Everyone:

I’ve been trying to get clarifications on almost a daily basis since this all started, so 1-5  are unofficial synopsis of what I was told by a Surface contact. #6, MS wants you to contact support, plus my opinion of how this has gone for others.

1. The first fix was for Simplo only – and for capacity dropping at a high rate – leading to only a few minute’s battery or even an auto shutdown. It was before LGC issues surfaced (pun intended).

2.   The fix this week (11/7) was the same as the initial one but extended to cover the above identical specific situation for LGC batteries as well

3. I don’t honestly know if Microsoft is investigating other battery issues and I am not getting responses to my inquiries asking for that information. I personally have an LGC that reports actual battery capacity larger than design capacity. Who knows.
4. If you install the firmware update, after you reboot, you would see a progress bar showing the thing installing. If you don’t get that progress bar, the update did not apply successfully.  If you reboot 3 times, the update will stop attempting to apply until it’s rearmed.  Rearming = In device manager, find the embedded controller entry in the firmware node – delete it (leave files).  Redetect hardware or go back to WU or the MSI to get it reoffered.  That will rearm the capsule.
5. In order to install successfully, the OS must *think* that the battery is at 40% charge or greater. I don’t know any way to trick the OS into doing this.
6. The only other option right now is to contact support, pay the $29 to talk to someone and hope you get someone that can really trouble shoot. My opinion is that the support agents will just send you to the $450 out of warranty exchange and there’s no guarantee that you will receive a device that won’t develop issues after the short warranty on it expires (or has other problems).

Throwing this on the pile for what it's worth. Went to another site a month or so ago - Surface would not power up on battery. Plugged it into the wall and worked for an hour or so. Unplugged it to work in another part of the building, immediately died on unplugging it.

Wound up using a dell laptop to do that work. Did some digging that night, found about this issue and saw that my Surface was sitting at ~95% plugged in and not charging when in a dock or plugged into the AC adapter. Went through the battery trouble shooting steps on the MS site, no luck.

Called support, they didn't bill me $30 but did say it was $549 to replace the unit, which is a little over a year old. They were also fairly unhelpful, and couldn't seem to help me outside of reading their script. Declined, waited for any MS follow-up and installed the new, recent firmware - no change. Disappointed, will not buy anymore Surface products for our enterprise. I can accept that **** happens, but at the same time, Microsoft has handled this really quite poorly with no communication. and my faith in the hardware is shaken, we'll resume using Dell products who have been excellent in the past with warranty claims, and with some out of warranty work as well.

Installed batteries

Information about each currently installed battery

Recent usage

Power states over the last 3 days

Community Moderators/MVP's are unpaid volunteers. I'm a customer, just like you.

And I feel exactly the same way.

>> Microsoft has handled this really quite poorly with no communication. and my faith in the hardware is shaken

I was just replying to the thread in general, and wasn't targeting you specifically when I expressed my disappointment, I hope it didn't come off as such.