Fingerprint reader stopped working with Surface Pro 3 after anniversary update

That's awesome DHewitt. It's been a week now for me and not a single hiccup. Works every time. I went ahead and added more fingerprints and they all work every time.

I'm guessing there's a driver conflict somewhere within the more recent updates. I ran the software update that came out Friday or Thursday of last week i think and it didn't overwrite the FP driver that i rolled back to. I'll have to keep my eye on the driver version in case there is a future update and i start having problems again.

Glad it worked out for you.

Ok, so I managed to locate the 2.2.10.8 driver on Softpedia.  It is part of the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Tablet Firmware/Driver March 2017 for Windows 10.  

Not sure if it is ok to link this here, but I am sure you can find it with a search.

In order to install, I had to:

1. Extract full package (extracting the driver only resulted in a fail)
2. Turn off wifi
3. Uninstall existing driver (checking box to delete existing driver)
4. Scan for hardware changes
5. Install fingerprint driver from pack onto unidentified device 'FPC TSD TX'

If you try and delete with an active internet connection, Windows will automatically install the more recent driver.

Reassuringly, the driver from Softpedia is signed so I was comfortable that I wasn't putting my Surface at risk.  While this seems to have worked for me (touches wood), any action you take is at your own risk.  

Thanks to TeeshYalamanchili.

Unfortunately, i have a later driver and no option to roll back. MS's insistence to only provide drivers through update rather offering an option to selectively download download is not helping the situation. Meantime, no fingerprint scanning. 

This issue is putting me off buying the MS modern desktop  keyboard.

I suspect there's some inherent incompatibility that isn't guaranteed to show up for everyone if the circumstances are right.

In my case, before the anniversary update, I was always having the problem where i would have to disconnect and reconnect the keyboard and then the sensor would MOSTLY work; not always.

Then after the anniversary update, it seems it just flat out stopped working altogether. 

If i had thought about it sooner, i would have just tried to roll back the driver to see if it solved the problem. Unfortunately, i didn't think of that right away and ended up doing a full system rebuild, which didn't solve the problem, and then it donned on me to do the driver rollback. 

Thus far, it's been working perfectly since doing that. Fingerprint scans every time - no disconnect/reconnects or anything. 

I think the other change i did make was to go into the driver settings and disable that "let the system put this to sleep" option. I have to double check if i did that or not.

I do not know what my previous biometric driver version was, but believe it was from August of 2017?  My current version that I rolled back to is 2.2.10.8 from 2/3/2016.  I've had zero issues since rolling back the driver. I've acceptable all other updates.

Interesting in that I've only had stable fps functionality the past several months whereas driver I rolled back to is well over a year.  Not sure if it was released well after driver date or if it is an interoperability issue with a different driver.

In any event it's surprising it's an issue.  Personally it is significant enough that I stop using SP3 when it misbehaves.  Especially when my Microsoft Designer Bluetooth mouse is also losing connection due to a driver error that randomly shows up (and driver is from 2006 I believe).  I use SP3 because it's very portable, but I end up reverting to my larger laptop because it's predictable and user input always works (sorry, had to squeeze in a rant)