Surface Book 3 Nvidia Graphics card disappears after updates.

I have the same issue with my Surface Book 3 15" with Windows 11 21H2 and latest firmware installed. While playing a few fullscreen games (e.g., The Sims 4, The Division, Tomb Raider, Surgeon Simulator, Lost Ark, Genshin Impact), it would make the "device disconnected" jingle and then the game would freeze. Thankfully, the mouse would still work, and I could alt-tab to another application.

The temporary solution I used was:

1. Go into Device Manager
2. Check under Display adapters
3. Find that the "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design" is missing
4. Right click Display adapters
5. Scan for hardware changes
6. Find that the "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design" is back

Unfortunately, the issue would happen multiple times a day, and it became pretty much impossible to play any games, so I've restricted my use to anything but games. I've been experiencing this issue since I purchased this Surface Book 3, but I realized that my extended warranty is expiring this year in August, so I figured I should try something more.

I called Microsoft Support, and they connected with me remotely. We went through all the usual troubleshooting steps of checking for Windows updates, firmware updates, and running the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit. After all the troubleshooting steps, I tried opening a game (The Sims 4) while the agent was connected, and within a couple minutes, the Surface made the disconnected device jingle, and the graphics card was missing from device manager. I was relieved that I could show the agent that it was a real issue that persists beyond simple troubleshooting.

We tried a full factory reset (Settings > System > Recovery > Reset PC > Remove everything), and I was advised by the Microsoft Support agent that I should NOT install NVIDIA Control Panel or NVIDIA GeForce Experience tool after the reset. He recommended I only try to update the NVIDIA display driver using the Device Manager - no external tool or anything from the NVIDIA website.

After the factory reset, the issue didn't happen for a couple of days, but then happened once.

The Microsoft Support agent offered a device replacement, so that's what I'll be trying next.

Good luck, everyone.

This issue is reproducible for light loads.

While developing software in Godot,

the graphical unit decided to drop
causing a lose in a few lines of code.

Verified. Redocking the tablet worked for me too.

This is my model:

System Model Surface Book 3
System SKU Surface_Book_3_1899
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.30GHz, 1498 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

You are my hero.

Yosha - I had this happen once on my SB3 13.5".  I undocked the tablet and re-docked it.  That seemed to make it re-appear in the device manager.  Good luck!

Zim_9 - I know this is an old post but I love you for this, every time this has happened to me I have had to do the long boring diagnostic process, and the first time I uninstalled and reinstalled everything which took a whole day to get it to work. But after just seeing this and trying it, it worked. Thank you so much you are going to save so much of my time.