Surface Pro 3 battery degradation

Anonymous

I've been using Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for a year, and shortly after the warranty expired I noticed my Surface Pro 3 can only last about 1-2 hours after a full charge. At first I thought this was a problem with background process draining the battery so I disabled everything running in the background. It didn't helped. Then I found out about the powercfg utility and run powercfg /batteryreport on it, and this was the result:

A full charge capacity has degraded by over 80% in just few weeks and continue degrading. I tried to "recalibrate" the battery by doing full charge then full drain multiple times, and it didn't helped. Talk with Microsoft via chat support and they insist this was a software problem and reinstalled the driver and asked me to wait few days to see if things improve. Not only it didn't improved, but now my Surface can only last 30 minutes.

Few days after chat (today), I called Microsoft support and they were being extremely unhelpful. Insist that this was a software problem (which the chat support person already did) and it's "perfectly normal" for battery capacity to degrade. I insist that I've already done the software "fixes" and it didn't work and tell them this is definitely hardware problem, but the person on the phone tell me there's nothing I could do except to order the out of warranty exchange (which cost about $560 in my local currency).

Is there anything else I should do? My country has no Microsoft Store which I could take the machine for them to take a look. Phone/online support were the only option, and none of them could understand the issue.

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Anonymous

Hello everyone,

Thanks for your continued patience here. We have now completed our testing of the update and it has passed our quality assurance process.

The update, “System Firmware Update - 8/29/2016”, is now available to install from Windows Update.

Before installing this update, ensure that your Surface Pro 3 is plugged directly in to AC power using the standard AC power adapter (do not use the Surface Docking Station), disconnect any USB devices or external monitors, and check that Windows shows a 40% charge or greater when you hover over the icon in the taskbar before you begin.

Once you install the update, please select Restart now (do not shutdown). After your Surface restarts, please manually restart it a second time to complete the process. For more information, please see our Surface Pro 3 Battery FAQ article.

If you’re having trouble charging your Surface, you get a low-battery error, or your Surface turns off when you unplug it, the steps in our Surface battery won’t charge article can help you pinpoint the problem. Should you need any further assistance, please contact us.

Thanks again.

Greg

Updated 8/29/16.

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1,459 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-08-31T18:57:37+00:00

Hi Barb,

Thanks a bunch for getting back to me!

I was able to do everything up till step 5. However my battery shows "9% available, plugged in not charging"

so I can't get the battery to show 100% charge. Should I continue with the steps anyway?

Also i'm not sure if this is part of the problem, but the Surface pro UEFI also has the code 10 error
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Anonymous

2016-08-31T18:26:05+00:00

IS NOT FIXED ON LGC BATTERY
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Anonymous

2016-08-31T18:25:27+00:00

I also am still showing 35,910 after about 4 full discharge / charge cycles. I am also feeling like this might be a temporary hardcoded value from the fix. Anyone showing anything higher after updating?

I am hoping this goes up from there back to close to what it was before the issue presented itself. In april, just before the cliff drop of capacity, mine was at 40,282 which seems about right for wear on a 14 month old battery. I am hoping the lack of real charge cycles since then has not degraded the actual cells too much.

Does anyone have a decent way to benchmark the current state of the battery in a fairly consistent way? I tried just putting it at 75% brightness and streaming a long looping HD youtube video of a fireplace at fullscreen until the surface died. The video made it to the 4:20 mark. Maybe we could get a common benchmark going and see where we are comparatively.

-Rob
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Anonymous

2016-08-31T17:49:14+00:00
they want you to try:

"
1. Boot into Windows however you can (doing a 2-button reset as other users in the forum have done, and letting it charge for a bit before trying to boot into Windows should work.)
2. In Device Manager find the Embedded Controller firmware. It will show with yellow bang. Open the properties of this firmware and verify the error code – it should say “Code 10”. If it’s not Code 10, don’t go any further, but post to let us know what you see in Device Manager.
3. Assuming it was listed with a Code 10 error, tell Device Manager to uninstall the firmware. It will give you choice to remove/delete the files. Check the box to remove the files and uninstall.
4. Reboot the system and then come back into Device Manager. Check to ensure it’s running the older Embedded Controller firmware. (38.9.50)
5. Once the older EC is on the system, stop and make sure that the system is showing “100%” charge on the battery. Once that’s true, go ahead and apply the update again. This should prompt you to restart once the update is done, but don’t choose to restart right away. Instead, close everything out and tell Windows to shut down (not restart) manually.
6. Boot on AC power again as you did before. You should get the splash screen as it tries to apply the firmware update again. Let us know the results.
"
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