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: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T14:01:47+00:00

    So I ran my tests over the past couple days and have mixed results. Not really any way to patch the drain of battery while completely shutdown. However, since my last charge both batteries have been in use, which is not supposed to happen. Here is what I found:

    Disable Windows Hello for ~9 hours: 100%-99%

    Disable Fast Boot for ~11 hours: 96%-94%

    Turn On Airplane Mode Before Shutdown for ~10 hours: 94%-92%

    Disable Intel Management Engine (SB wouldn't let me roll back to version 9) for ~13 hours: 90%-87%

    I feel that if I waited longer with disabling Windows Hello I would still get about a 2% battery drain like the others. Therefore, none of these are quick fixes to the issue. I have a feeling if I waited 24 hours I would get about 4%-5% battery drain as well. I am on my 3rd SB. My last SB drained about 10% overnight and never lasted 10-12 hours while in light usage.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-10T00:35:30+00:00

    Hello all

    Thank you for continuing to provide details. 

    I understand that those of you who are affected are able to produce this behavior from doing a shut down through the UI.  Has anyone tried shutting down by a long press on the power button?  Do you see the same drain through this method?

    Do the batteries drain if the Clipboard is disconnected from the Keyboard before shut down? 

    Please post your results as you are able.

    Best regards

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-09T16:38:53+00:00

    When I do a "Windows Start" -> Power -> Shut Down...

    In the morning my battery percentages are always where I left them the night before.

    Is this how you are performing "Shut Down"?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-09T16:25:22+00:00

    4% actually (relatively) isn't that bad! We are seeing users in this forum who are losing 5-10% while completely shut off. So consider yourself lucky :) MS says a fix is coming "early next year" for these power mgmt. issues. The temporary fix is to enable battery saver and turn off sleep (use hibernate instead) in control panel / power settings. By doing that, I don't lose ANY power at all when completely shut off, or even when I just shut the lid.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2015-12-08T22:11:00+00:00

    Thanks for that link, TaylorTeske! Very insightful!

    Looks like FastStart was the issue in that case, I wonder if that is the big issue we are all dealing with when our SB's drain while completely off. Hrm...

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments