GPU not detected in Surface Book 2

Anonymous
2018-01-26T04:42:59+00:00

Hello MS support,

I bought surface book 2, 256 GB, NVIDIA GeForce 1050, 2GB model  in November, 2017 and it worked pretty well until recently. I don't know why it stopped detecting the GPU. It's not showing up in the display adapters. I tried detaching and attaching the screen it gets detected for a moment and goes off again. I tried one solution offered in the Microsoft page to uninstall the driver (checking the delete software ) and restart the PC but with no luck.

Is it a hardware problem or a frequent software problem ? I will be really glad if you can provide me a solution to this.

Thanks,

Rajeev

Surface | Surface Book | Install and update

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Anonymous
2018-05-21T18:09:16+00:00

Hi Robert_at_lane,

I had the same problem as you the last days and I also tried the different solutions posted here in the community I nearly gave up but today I tried it the last time on a different way and it seems like it is working now. Graphics card is still there and isn't switching off anymore even if I use programs which need a lot of performance, also waking up is working super fast again without any problem and the power button is working as well. (I guess there is some issue with the power management because when my power supply was plugged in the power button and the startup worked, unplugged I could press what I wanted, only the detach button was waking up the device and the Nvidia cards always disappeared after a short time except when I was using Rhino3D plugged in with best performance)

Maybe my solution helps you as well....

  1. Make sure that all windows updates are made and the latest firmware is installed, also the latest Nvidia driver (397.64)
  2. Put the power settings to best performance (plugged in and in battery mode)
  3. Open the device manager and keep it open
  4. Unplug your SB2
  5. Detach the tablet and wait for ~10-15sec until the system updated the connected devices (the device manager should flicker once or twice until it stops, maybe there is a sound as well)
  6. Reattach and wait until the Nvidia card pops up in the device manager
  7. Quickly make a normal shutdown as long as the card is still visible in the device manager
  8. When the device is off, do a hard reset by pressing the volume up button and the power button for at least 20 seconds (Press and hold the volume up button before pressing and holding the power button)
  9. The UEFI interface might appear, just exit and let the system restart.

These steps seemed to work in my case...I hope they help you as well...if there are any changes during the further use of my SB2 I will inform you.

Best regards.

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Anonymous
2018-03-19T23:28:32+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. We have completed our investigation and have published a set of drivers and system updates which includes a fix for this issue. This is now available in Windows Update.

We recommend that you install the latest updates to keep your Surface performing its best. You can get updates now by checking Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

  • Update 8/1/2018: New drivers are available for Surface Book 2 15” PixelSense™ Display with NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060
  • Update 11/28/201 8: New drivers are available for Surface Book 2 13.5” PixelSense™ Display with NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050

You can find the details of the latest update on our Surface Book 2 update history page.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-08-07T14:06:27+00:00

    What frustrates me the most is for 8 months plus they have denied the problem existed.  Then all of sudden once I threaten to get a law firm involved, plus the next thing you know there is an article referencing my note about engaging a class action law suit.  Now all of a sudden there is an update released to fix a non existant problem?  Microsoft get your story straight!  Was there a driver problem or not?  Is this a fix to a real documented issue or is it a fix to a ghost issue that you will not offically acknowledge?  Just looking for clarity because your story has changed so many times!  Your a buch of quacks.  Its ok when your system took a **** on me during the intial setup after hours of tech support it was never fixed and my office program was still broken.  So I did a full complete restore and lost lots of data because backing up the data kept failing.  Your products are crap and your support is the worst in the industry.  I think your trying to establish the standard for the worst support ever.  Never Microsoft again.  At least I can get a straight answer from Apple.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-08-07T09:00:30+00:00

    Update 8/1/2018:

    Thank you for your feedback. We have completed our investigation and have published a set of drivers and system updates which includes a fix for this issue. This is now available in Windows Update.

    We recommend that you install the latest updates to keep your Surface performing its best. You can get updates now by checking Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

    You can find the details of the latest update on our Surface Book 2 update history page.

    After this update, my external monitor is now set to a Bit Depth of 6-bit rather than 8-bit which results in severe colour banding.

    I can't find a way to change it, will try to rollback the update later today.

    I'd rather have to go through a forced restart every few months then have a terrible looking image on my monitor.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-06T19:29:48+00:00

    Update 8/1/2018:

    Thank you for your feedback. We have completed our investigation and have published a set of drivers and system updates which includes a fix for this issue. This is now available in Windows Update.

    We recommend that you install the latest updates to keep your Surface performing its best. You can get updates now by checking Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

    You can find the details of the latest update on our Surface Book 2 update history page.

    After the 8/1/2018 update Windows Hello stopped working on my Surface Book 2.   On power up the camera could not be found by Windows Hello.

    To resolve I had to change two things:

    1) Control Panel/Power/Choose what happens with power button/DISABLE the option "Turn on fast startup.".

    2) Run/gpedit.mac (Local Policy Editor).  Go to Admin templates, Windows Components/Biometrics.   Enable "Allow the use of biometrics" and "Allow users to log on using biometrics".

    After the May 1 update the NVIDIA 1060 card was no longer available and I had to use the method described by many of unplugging the power, starting the laptop using the power button and + volume control, then choose restart.  That woke up the NVIDIA card.  Between March 2018 (when I purchased to SB2) and May 1 the NVIDIA card was present.

    Before the 8/1/2018 update, ArcGIS Pro utilized the NVIDIA 1060 card nearly 100% as displayed in Task Manger.  After the 8/1/2018 update it appeared to be a nearly 50/50 share between NVIDIA 1060 and Intel 620. 

    UPDATE: For the "TODAY" discussion below I realized that I was fooling myself.  I was running on just the battery while testing.  And so the NVIDIA card was offline because of that.  Once I connect to power the NVIDIA came back online.  Use distribution is about 50/50 Intel/NVIDIA while running ArcGIS Pro.  Before connecting the power I ran the NVIDIA driver update from device manager and Windows did update the NVIDIA driver even though I had installed the 8/1/2018 Windows update.  So not sure if the NVIDIA driver update is included in the 8/1/2018 Windows update.  After the NVIDIA update, in the Control Panel/NVIDIA Control Panel the ArcGIS Pro item is no longer present.

    TODAY:

    It looks like I made the mistake of using the Control Panel/NVIDIA Control Panel application and adding ArcGIS Pro to the list of items.  When I added ArcGIS Pro the graphics option was set to "auto NVIDIA" which I selected.  NOW, the NVIDIA card is not being used at all by ArcGIS Pro when I view activity in Task Manager.  And it appears there is no way to remove ArcGIS Pro from the list.

    I've tried removing the NVIDIA driver and letting Windows reinstall it.  No joy.  Task manager/Performance tab displays the NVIDIA driver but it has zero activity and memory use.

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