GPU not detected in Surface Book 2

Anonymous

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

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.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

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....

Make sure that all windows updates are made and the latest firmware is installed, also the latest Nvidia driver (397.64)
Put the power settings to best performance (plugged in and in battery mode)
Open the device manager and keep it open
Unplug your SB2
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)
Reattach and wait until the Nvidia card pops up in the device manager
Quickly make a normal shutdown as long as the card is still visible in the device manager
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)
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

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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495 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-06-18T09:34:57+00:00

So i think I'm having a similar problem.

My Surface Book 2 loses the Nvidia gpu from tome to time. Reboot soesnt help, and when i try to detach it takes several tries because despite being attached, it twlla me it already is. However i cannot remove the screen. After several tries it will finally remove. I then can re attach and the Nvidia will come back.

This started last week and is very frustrating on many levels. A $4000 (CAD) PC should not behave like this.
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Anonymous

2018-06-13T00:43:45+00:00

I think Microsoft has known there is a problem since the first surface book. For example, the following link to reddit discusses how to recognize the dGPU in the performance base 2 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3qd9dl/i\_have\_a\_surface\_book\_with\_dgpu\_how\_do\_i\_tell\_if/

Later this week or maybe next week, I'm going to call support and see if I can get someone to look at this forum and give us some answers. I'll try to escalate, if possible.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a Microsoft store and talked to tech support about the issue and asked that the support person to escalate the problem. Maybe I was too polite. I haven't heard back.

Have you tried to use the Nvidia control panel to set the dGPU for a specific program?

Regards.
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Anonymous

2018-06-12T15:17:33+00:00
Hello,

Both, actually - my DGPU disappeared and I am expecting (as many people here) an official answer and fix from Microsoft.

I did a hard reboot (step 8 of the answer by Philip_Aaron above), which worked, in the sense that my nVIDIA DGPU reappeared in system information. However, there are 2 issues:
1. the nVIDIA driver installer still didn't find the DGPU to update the drivers (not really a good sign)
2. by default, the SB2 is still running on the Intel GPU, including when playing video games
Luckily I found a setting to force the "high performance" mode (vs. battery-saving) for specific applications. I have used that for the .exe of my video game, and it seems to run on the nVIDIA DGPU now.

I don't know how long that will last, though. And the high-performance mode makes the laptop fan very noisy. Running the same video game on the DGPU before it disappeared didn't require "high-performance"/noisy fan mode, so it should be possible to have it work normally.

In any case, this whole mess is unacceptable. If Microsoft wants to be taken seriously, they need to provide adequate support for their hardware - especially since my DGPU disappeared after a Windows update...

Regards,
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