Surface Book 3 Nvidia Graphics card disappears after updates.

It's Friday 10th December 2021 and I had exactly the same problem.

I was trying to play Fallout 4 and I originally thought it was the NVIDIA GeForce Drivers playing up at first. I originally thought it was something to do with Windows 11 and then found this forum feed.

After digging through Device Manager, I realised it wasn't detecting the NVIDIA Card at all in my Surface Book 3.

I tried reinstalling the Firmware / updating it - and that didn't work.

However, I detached the screen - immediately reattached and it and BOOM it was back.

I think the bug comes from something to do with Sleep mode. I never use Sleep mode, but I did for the first time yesterday and for some reason, it doesn't wake up the NVIDIA Card or something.

I hope this helps you!

THANK YOU to everyone for all your great posts here. I was going nuts without Fallout 4, but appreciate you sharing your stories.

As much as I love Microsoft, they need to fix this. It's $3k laptop, and whislt I love the laptop - bugs like this make it hard for everyone.

THANK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!

Glad you are onboard with communicating this problem. It's not a sleep issue, it's something deeper that Microsoft needs to fix. There are lots of ways to bring back the GPU like detaching and reattaching, but they are not solutions to the problem which Microsoft has ignored. We've got plenty of "try this" or "try that's." Microsoft needs to figure out what is wrong, make a fix and very plain statement explaining that they have unequivocally figure out what is wrong. Since I doubt the Surface Book Line will continue after SB3 I doubt Microsoft cares enough to fix this problem.

16,000 views and growing, coming up on 2 years for many, suffering with problem. Come on Microsoft, figure it out and fix it. It's not anything you are suggesting. Sure, that might bring the GPU back for a few hours or a day, but it will disappear again. It's not drivers from NVIDIA, it's a PROBLEM that needs to be fixed.

Personally I think it is a sleep issue .. If you power off your screen the nvidea gpu goes into hibernation and when it resumes the tablet acts independently (onboard gpu) and because the game cannot access the nvidea gpu instantly it crashes..

Remedy is the tablet needs to be querying constantly for the nvidea gpu and base station and not letting them hibernate.

This create two problems

1 power usage and overheating

2 bottlenecks for tablet usage which is a primary function of the device ...

So I guess there dammed if they do dammed if they don’t..

Fallout 4?! As odd as it might sound this is partly how I came to the Surface Book 3 (and not a newer Surface Pro) - upgrade to something that would run Fallout 4! Still playing it now :) I don't get many issues running fallout, unless of course it has decided to drop the card unexpectedly.

The issue does mean it stays as an overpriced laptop most of the time and rarely becomes a tablet - the party trick it was bought for. Losing the primary graphics almost EVERY time it goes through a detach re-attach cycle is maddening.

It does seem more stable on Windows 11, although wouldn't say it was completely fixed.