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
    2015-11-25T05:15:45+00:00

    I detached from the base and left it that way for a couple of days.  I then reattached it and started it up and the battery was still at 100%.

    I just now shut it down and detached it again, but this time I reattached it.  I'm going to leave it shutdown again for a while and see if it drains the battery still.

    I doubt it is the release button that is draining the power.  That shouldn't require any (or at least very very little) power to work (definitely should not be draining 5%-10%+ battery per day).  If it is the release button that is the issue, that is a major design flaw.

    Either way I hope this can be fixed via a firmware or software update.

    Microsoft people, can we get some sort of official response on this issue??

    Update: So after trying shutdown -> detach -> reattach and letting it sit for a day, I still see the battery drain issue.

    So:

    shutdown -> leave attached = battery drain

    shutdown -> detach and leave detached = no battery drain

    shutdown -> detach -> reattach = batter drain

    Leaving it detached is NOT a reasonable solution.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-02T01:46:03+00:00

    Have you ever found a solution to your problem? I noticed that my battery is also draining when I completely shut it down. It went from 100% to 95% after about 24 hours of shut down (not hibernate and not sleep). I hope Microsoft acknowledges this problem and finds a solution to this.

    Also does anyone know if the battery drains at all after hibernating for a day or more?

    After skimming the  11 pages, it sounds like people who put it on hibernate experience 0 battery drain? which almost sounds weird if shutting down the surface completely causes battery drain, but hibernate doesn't.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-02T04:21:54+00:00

    No, I think the ball is in Microsoft's court at this point.  I just hope that they can fix it via a software/firmware update.  I'm just not sure how such a blatant issue could have made it into a product at this price point.  I can understand issues with sleep... but there is no excuse for battery drain, like we are seeing, when shutdown.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-02T05:57:55+00:00

    Well, I'm willing to wait about another 2 weeks for a fix for this issue.. then, a week after that, my return period will run out. I really don't want to return this and I am praying and hoping that MS fixes this battery drain issue. I want the huge long battery life that was promised to me when I purchased this expensive but awesome machine. I love my SB. Microsoft, please restore our faith in our purchase. (And fix the display driver issue soon, too, Intel.)

    Thanks! - New 256 gb i5 8gb RAM dGPU Surface Book Lover

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-02T12:17:37+00:00

    Having read that some have experienced battery drain overnight even when completely closed down, I tried the following...

    I completely closed down before going to bed last night and my  battery was at 100%.  This morning I booted up, immediately checked my battery without attaching the charger and my battery was still at 100%.  I experienced no battery drain while completely shut down overnight.

    After several working day battery tests I'm getting at least 12 hours of battery life at 50% brightness.  In one test I got 13 1/2 hours battery life during a typical work day.

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