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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

283 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-04T23:02:44+00:00

    If you only open it up once a week, you probably didn't need it anyway.  ;-)

    I was on vacation.

    Hey, I did put a winking smiley on the end of my "meant to be humorous" comment.  I'm not happy with the current status of "sleep" either, but Microsoft is promising a fix "right after the first of the year".  If/when they implement this, I won't have any more issues!  I don't have a problem just completely powering down when finished working, as it boots up so quickly, but it will certainly be nice when "sleep" really works like it should.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-01-04T23:30:25+00:00

    If you only open it up once a week, you probably didn't need it anyway.  ;-)

    I was on vacation.

    Hey, I did put a winking smiley on the end of my "meant to be humorous" comment.  I'm not happy with the current status of "sleep" either, but Microsoft is promising a fix "right after the first of the year".  If/when they implement this, I won't have any more issues!  I don't have a problem just completely powering down when finished working, as it boots up so quickly, but it will certainly be nice when "sleep" really works like it should.

    True. It's just frustrating when you buy this as a gift for someone who is not as technical, and she keeps opening it up to a dead battery. With the battery draining while off, I'm returning it just in case it's a hardware defect. If it was only sleep, I'd keep it but this is a deal breaker, at least until they patch it up.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-01-05T02:03:58+00:00

    Agreed. It should just work. Right now it doesn't. I'm anticipating that it will be fixed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-05T12:44:59+00:00

    I shut down the computer (I know the difference between shutdown and sleep...). I leave the USB Ethernet adapter that I bought from Microsoft plugged into the USB port on the Surface Book. There are no blinking light coming from the adapter as there are when the SB is turned on. I checked USB setting in Device Manager and there is a check beside "let the computer turn off this device to save power? and there is no check mark beside "let the computer use this device to wake the computer" I forget the actual wording. I leave the SB turned off for 2 or 3 days and when I turn it back on, half the battery is drained from the full charge present when I turned it off. (This was a test and I know there was a full charge to start). Is this normal behavior?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2016-01-05T14:49:59+00:00

    For work, I keep a Lenovo Helix (similar form factor to Surface Book) at home to be able to log in remotely due to an emergency.  It's also on Windows 10.  Looking in the Event Log, it has been shutdown since 11/17/15.  I powered it on this morning, 1/5/16, and it was at 93% battery after a month and a half.

    Battery 1 was at 96% (tablet)

    Battery 2 was at 88% (keyboard)

    Total was at 93%

    It has the Fast Boot enabled, Hibernate is available but I had it shut down, not hibernated.

    The only Windows 10 difference I see between this and my Surface Book is that Windows 10 on the Helix doesn't give the option "On battery power, stay connected to Wi-Fi while asleep" so I assume the hardware doesn't support that option.

    I don't see how staying on wi-fi when asleep would affect the battery on the Surface Book when it is shut down, but still wanted to point out the difference.  However, when I disable this feature on the Surface Book, it still overly drains the battery when shutdown anyway, so seems unrelated.

    The only time I see the Surface Book not overly drain the battery is when I have the tablet undocked from the keyboard.  Is the keyboard dock sucking battery from the tablet when it is shut down or hibernated?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments