surface book battery drain while shut down

Anonymous
2015-12-09T16:09:58+00:00

Split from this thread.

I have been noticing that when I shutdown my surface book, when I power it on the next day the battery has drained some. If I leave it off for a couple of days it will drain down from 100% to around 85% or lower.

I disabled fast startup... and then just decided to disable hibernation altogether. That didn't help.

I have windows hello disabled, but that shouldn't matter anyway since I'm shutting it down, not sleeping.

Some searching and I found a general windows 10 issue with the "Intel Management Engine Interface" driver. Some say that v11 can cause this issue. One solution that I have seen suggested is to go into device manager and in the power management tab for this device uncheck the option that allows windows to power it down to save power. I tried that and it didn't help.

Others have suggested downgrading the driver from v11 to v9 or v10, but I don't know where to get v9 or v10 of this driver that is compatible with the surface book. Anyone know if one of the downloads on Intel's site would be compatible?

So, has anyone else noticed this issue and know of a fix?

Surface | Surface Book | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-08T00:44:04+00:00

    Wow I'm surprised you're really getting that much battery life. I was thinking that my more powerful SB (i6/16GB/512), like yours, might just get lower battery life than the claims that were tested on lower-end models. 

    I'm on my second SB, and on both of them I've got about 6-7 hours at 50% battery, with battery saver on, a few Office programs open and keeping Chrome closed whenever possible because it shoots through battery. 

    Can I ask what you're usually doing getting this battery life? And does this include short periods of sleep or is this what you would get using it straight through.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-01-08T00:25:30+00:00

    This magnet thing might have legs. My SB always drains when powered off. The last wo nights the lid has been left open and I had no power loss in my batteries. I am going to experiment a little more and will post again.

    So I was on another site reading about another user experience and discovered something that seemed impossible.

    Apparently, this user said you can actually detach the screen when the SB is in full power down mode.  Completed shut down and attempted and guess what?  User is CORRECT.

    Now, maybe I am late to the party with discovering that, but given that knowledge, it would seem this might be one of the bigger reasons we are seeing significant battery drain when fully powered off. 

    As previous user said, "significant design flaw" seems to be appropriate wording.  How else can you detach the screen when it has no power?

    It would certainly make sense that a computer could be powered up from a powered down situation by pressing a button, as this is how we turn a computer on.  It would then make sense to me that pressing the button to release the screen would turn battery power on, release the screen, and then turn battery power off again.  It would seem that there SHOULD be an insignificant battery depletion with the process to make the screen release and/or a screen reattachment.  Otherwise the battery should not be in use.

    I've tested my SB i7/16GB/512GB a number of times and before completely powering down at night I'm at 100% battery.  In the morning I'm at either 100% or 99%.  I've never had any more battery depletion overnight than that.

    At 75% brightness I can get an average of 8 hours on battery.  At 50% brightness I can get an average of 12 hours on battery.

    Until the "sleep" problem is resolved I'm totally powering down at night and I'm totally powering down before putting my SB in my commuter bag.  However during my work day I thoroughly enjoy using "sleep" and Windows Hello Face Recognition.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-07T22:17:05+00:00

    Thanks John1F. I had a Microsoft tech remotely check the computer today. All updates were installed. She went to device manager and reinstalled my "battery drivers?". Interesting, I note that they do now not show up in device manager now. Must be one of your tech support secrets....:) Anyway, before I called I noticed that even with no Ethernet connection connected to the USB port, I was loosing 10% power per day, completely shut down. From full charge and with 15 minutes of tech support, I was down to 80%. As to your question, Start-Power-Shutdown. I am checking again after the driver reinstall and if it happens again, I am to call back tech support. Thanks.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-07T22:08:02+00:00

    Not wrong, it's an opinion, and never said the lawsuit would not have merit. It was a practical suggestion that you may be better off returning it, if possible, and move on.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-01-07T21:23:46+00:00

    This magnet thing might have legs. My SB always drains when powered off. The last wo nights the lid has been left open and I had no power loss in my batteries. I am going to experiment a little more and will post again.

    So I was on another site reading about another user experience and discovered something that seemed impossible.

    Apparently, this user said you can actually detach the screen when the SB is in full power down mode.  Completed shut down and attempted and guess what?  User is CORRECT.

    Now, maybe I am late to the party with discovering that, but given that knowledge, it would seem this might be one of the bigger reasons we are seeing significant battery drain when fully powered off. 

    As previous user said, "significant design flaw" seems to be appropriate wording.  How else can you detach the screen when it has no power?

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