Surface Book 3 Randomly Freezing

Anonymous
2020-06-12T01:11:42+00:00

As im working on my new $3500 Surface Book 3 i can't help but be extremely annoyed because the screen/mouse just randomly freeze, usually for about 5-10 seconds then its back to normal.  Sometimes it will freeze and i have to hit the power button and that seems to unfreeze it.  Very annoying, not to mention the screen dimming and getting bright on its own even though the option for it to do that is turned off.

Surface | Surface Book | Display and screen

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Anonymous
2021-03-30T21:59:02+00:00

A fix for this issue is now available through Windows Update. Please review the Surface Book 3 Update History page.

Eddy.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-20T19:48:43+00:00

    I echo the same situation of screen auto dimming when switching different content even though that "feature" has been turned off; and system periodically hanging for a couple seconds while I type or use a mouse or trackpad. Based on the others' reports this is not a unique configuration issue, but something more widespread and common. 

    This is extremely frustrating when trying to work on such an expensive device. I welcome ANY help or advice that could be given.

    Thank you in advance.

    Adam i dont think that microsoft is going to do anything anytime soon. I still have 4 Surface products with the same problems going on with each. I think its the bluetooth module causing all these problems and that would be one big recall for them. Im just going to return the remaing 4 products.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-21T15:38:37+00:00

    @Isaac - The Surface Book 3 15" that I ultimately returned had no Bluetooth devices paired and still exhibited the freezing symptoms straight out of the box.

    Furthermore we have an original Surface Book, a Surface Book 2 15" as well as a Surface Pro 6 in our group, none of which exhibit these symptoms and all of which are paired with various Bluetooth accessories (mice, keyboards, pens, etc.)   There may be more than one issue affecting Surface devices that can cause the freezing behavior, but in my case and for others on this thread regarding the Surface Book 3, it's not at all clear that Bluetooth is the causal factor.

    @Microsoft - Do you have anything to contribute regarding this issue?

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-22T20:41:28+00:00

    My surface book 3 is 6 days old and I have the same problem.  Every 30  minutes or so, the system (and screen) freezes for 3-7 seconds.  I can't alt tab to another window or anything.  Totally frozen.  Then the screen flashes black for a 1/2 second and everything is working again.  I see its a common problem.  I guess MSFT can't even get their $3,000 flagship product working and I will probably return it and give up on MSFT as a hardware vendor.  Only reason I bought it is my Surface Book 2 was bricked by a MSFT update

    • the keyboard battery won't charge anymore and I had to disconnect the screen to charge it separately to a max 50% power level (an issue reported by many others).  And just out of warranty. Order the SB3 express and they shipped with with Windows Home via FedEx ground.  Had the freezing with WIn10 Home and also after I upgraded to Win10Pro.

    I have nothing attached to the SB3.

    A solution needed very quickly or the product goes back and I move to Lenovo.  Very sad.

    To top it off, the SB3 seems slower than my SB2 was.  But no hard data.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-08-24T05:57:57+00:00

    I think there are a couple of Problems mixed in this thread.

    I have the SB3 in Basic Configuration (German QWERTZ-Keyboard) and had a bit of an Odyssey already.

    The first model I bought and still have has the issue of "keyboard-freezing" for ~5 seconds. I can't figure out in what frequency the problem occures, sometimes it's only after 30min, sometimes it's every two minutes.

    I never noticed it with a MS Bluetooth Mouse paired with the SB3 though.

    The second model I bought had an issue with the hinge-joint. It was quite loose already, so I returned it instantly.

    The third device had an issue with the headphone-connection and bluetooth-audio (seems to be another widespread problem), but the freezing never occured. Nonetheless I returned it and hoped, that the 2004-Update might solve the problem on the first device. Well, it didn't.

    I reinstalled windows several times, also used the Surface-Diagnose-Toolkid without any results. I even interchanged the keyboards, in order to figure out if it's a keyboard-hardware issue. It wasn't. 

    I don't know what else to do, so I'll send it in for repairs this week. Hopefully I'll get a working device in return.

    Edit: Allmost forgot. There might be two other issues connected to this one. Sometimes I get the feeling, that the keyboard isn't as responsive as it should be. Or I don't hit the keys hard enough, which was never an issue with any other keyboards I used until now. Another issue is Touch-responsiveness in Tablet-mode.

    Anyone else with these problems?

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