surface book battery drain while shut down

Anybody have any recommendations on how to insure that your machine really does shut down?

When I left for home tonight, I selected shutdown from the power menu, then let it sit for a couple of minutes to be sure.  At that point, the display was black, the keyboard backlight is off, and the machine was non-responsive to the keyboard as it should be.  Then out of paranoia, I separated the tablet from the keyboard.  Everything still seemed good.  I put it all in my backpack and head home.

I eat dinner, then pull my machine out of my backpack and it's hot.  I boot it up and look at the event logs and do a sleep study.  I can't find any log of it actually shutting down.  Instead, it went into connected standby because of a lid closure.  I think that has to be because I stored the tablet next to the keyboard, and even though they were disconnected, the magnet in the base must have actuated the sensor in the tablet.  So it tried to go into connected standby, but the intel graphics driver was active 99% of the time and ate up 2.3Wh of energy.  Sometime while I was home, the machine noticed that it was on my network and did a backup.  All this in spite of my having set the control panel to not be on the network during sleep, to say nothing of the machine supposed being shut down.  Then at some point, the machine crashed, presumably because of overheating.  It used up almost all of battery 2 in the intervening period, so that might also be the reason for the crash.

It just seems insane that I can't even reliably turn the machine off.  What am I supposed to do when I want to board an airplane?  There's nothing you can do that will reliably put it in a quiescent mode, short of doing the low-level powerdown by holding the power switch down for 30 seconds.

I agree that it is pitiful that I have to resort to extra measures to guarantee a shut-down.  Here's what I do.  After doing a power -> shut down, I then draw slow circles on my track pad to keep the keyboard back light turned on.  When my machine actually shuts down, the keyboard back light suddenly turns off.  Then I know I'm actually powered-down.  Only then do I shut the lid.

Anybody have any recommendations on how to insure that your machine really does shut down?

When I left for home tonight, I selected shutdown from the power menu, then let it sit for a couple of minutes to be sure.  At that point, the display was black, the keyboard backlight is off, and the machine was non-responsive to the keyboard as it should be.  Then out of paranoia, I separated the tablet from the keyboard.  Everything still seemed good.  I put it all in my backpack and head home.

I eat dinner, then pull my machine out of my backpack and it's hot.  I boot it up and look at the event logs and do a sleep study.  I can't find any log of it actually shutting down.  Instead, it went into connected standby because of a lid closure.  I think that has to be because I stored the tablet next to the keyboard, and even though they were disconnected, the magnet in the base must have actuated the sensor in the tablet.  So it tried to go into connected standby, but the intel graphics driver was active 99% of the time and ate up 2.3Wh of energy.  Sometime while I was home, the machine noticed that it was on my network and did a backup.  All this in spite of my having set the control panel to not be on the network during sleep, to say nothing of the machine supposed being shut down.  Then at some point, the machine crashed, presumably because of overheating.  It used up almost all of battery 2 in the intervening period, so that might also be the reason for the crash.

It just seems insane that I can't even reliably turn the machine off.  What am I supposed to do when I want to board an airplane?  There's nothing you can do that will reliably put it in a quiescent mode, short of doing the low-level powerdown by holding the power switch down for 30 seconds.

Tried those drivers. Still losing apx 2% / hr in sleep mode. No dice :/

As long as I shut-down completely I have no battery drain.  So I'm thoroughly enjoying my Surface Book.  It will be nice to get the "sleep" fix, but that fixes only a very minor inconvenience for me.

Please keep in mind Gary that you said you never shutdown your SB for more than 10 hours at a time, so technically, you may also experience battery drain after 24 hours of shutdown, you just haven't had a chance to experience that yet.  I know you said you use the SB too much for a 24 hour test, but if you ever have a down weekend, I would love to know what happens with your SB after 24 hours like the rest of us with the issue.

Well, I do put my SB in my courier bag when I go out.  When I take my SB out of the bag, sometimes several hours later, it's always nice and cold to the touch.  So I'm sure I'm not getting the sleep related activity some have complained about when they open their bag to a hot computer.

But you are correct.  I've yet to go more than 10 hours without turning my Surface Book on. It's the first thing I do in the morning before anything else.  Do you think that maybe I have an addiction?

Have the people who've been getting drain during shutdown done a sleep study to make sure their machines are actually shutting down?  One of the problems I've seen is that the machine will never actually get all the way to sleep or hibernate mode, but you can't tell since it turns off the screen and keyboard backlight early on in the process and there are no other visible signs of activity, even though the machine is awake.  It wouldn't surprise me if the same thing was happening with shutdown too (i.e. it never really shuts down).

PhuongNTran did a sleep study test a couple pages back in this thread.  His showed zero usage over a few days of shutdown, but still had the battery drain issue.

I know on my SB, if I shut it down and leave the tablet disconnected from the keyboard, I get zero battery drain.  If I shut it down and have the tablet connected to the keyboard and closed in clamshell mode, I lose at least 5% battery every 24 hours, sometimes more.  I have tried this both in hibernate, and when completely turned off.  Same results.