Surface Book Performance Base - Crashing following MS Update

Anonymous
2018-01-13T06:31:09+00:00

On 12 January I rebooted my Surface Book with Performance Base, and was greeted with "Please wait while Windows 10 performs updates - 0%..." screen.  When the system restarted, under the "SURFACE" white text on black boot screen was a colored progress bar which is usually not present after windows updates, so I assume this was the Spectre/Meltdown firmware update.

However, since then my system has been incredibly unstable - in fact, the first crash was about 5 minutes after the Update was installed (interestingly, after the first crash a different colored progress bar was under the "SURFACE" white text on black boot screen - looking at the update notes, it was supposed to reboot the system twice but the second reboot was the result of a crash).

The crashes occur at least every hour and only twice have they been accompanied by an error message (one of the two was "Paged fault in non-paged area"), but the rest of the time the crash is just the display going black (occasionally accompanied by a buzz from the audio speakers).  The system is still running, as it requires a 10 second hold down of the power button to switch off.

My guess is that one of the firmware updates is either not optimized for performance base or was installed incorrectly, but unfortunately I don't have a recent restore point to roll back.  It's incredibly frustrating to try and get any work done (in fact, it crashed while I was trying to submit this question).

Is there any way to diagnose the fault without doing a complete system restore - I'm travelling in an area of very poor internet quality, so wiping the system and reinstalling all the programs is pretty much out of the question.

Surface | Surface Book | Install and update

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-15T02:34:44+00:00

    More info:

    during the previous 8 hours MS Support has had me do the following:

    remove and replace video drivers (Nvidia GTX)

    remove any windows updates installed after the in place upgrade

    perform a system reset (refresh)

    none of this worked.  In fact the reset made things worse, I suspect because it is incompatible with the new firmware, i can no longer open control panel, edge, windows update, event viewer and other unnecessary apps.  The support tech didn't seem to be interested in the firmware update at all and had no interest in flashing the devices back to a good firmware.

    now they have me creating a usb boot disk and reinstalling from that with a surface image i'm downloading, see what that does in about 4 hours, it's big.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-14T18:55:44+00:00

    installed latest MS Surface firmware.

    SurfaceBook_Win10_16299_1801000_0.msi

    the install completed without err but did not improve performance or repair crashes.

    As a long time tech/IT contractor my experience tells me this is a firmware issue and must be corrected with an updated firmware to replace the previous noted firmware versions.

    I don't advise doing a refresh/reinstall as this will not replace firmware and thus be an exercise in futility.  An In-place upgrade will replace software, preserving your apps and registry and possibly solve other malware/virus caused issues, while this may cause more trouble than it solves that trouble is usually caused by malware/virus activity and one should do multiple scans prior to any updates, upgrades and troubleshooting.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-14T12:35:23+00:00

    Thanks Barb.  Unfortunately the Diagnostic Toolkit didn't identify any issues.

    I've managed to backup all my data (which took forever, as the system kept crashing) and did a windows reinstall recovery keeping personal data - unfortunately the system has already crashed twice with the same black screen symptoms.

    It looks like this is a firmware issue - I've tried rolling back using Device Manager, but I noticed when I use the UEFI directly the "About" page still lists the latest build number while Device Manager is under the impression the rollback was successful.

    I'm hoping the system stays stable long enough to get the Surface Book firmware .MSI, and I'm going to try reinstalling the firmware in case it was a faulty install (for the record, I use Avast and there are some reports on the Avast forum of XP Spectre/Meltdown updates being blocked).  As I've done a windows reinstall, all apps including antivirus have been removed - so if any of them interfered, hopefully that wont happen a second time.

    If it's a mis-optimized firmware rollout, I hope this is identified and an emergency update released quickly otherwise my surface book with performance base has just become an expensive paperweight.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-14T02:43:21+00:00

    Have the exact same issue following these updates:

    surface firmware 5.62.3126.2

    surface firmware 11.7.4.3330

    surface firmware 90.1837.256.0

    surface firmware 91.1926.768.0

    intel corp display 22.20.16.4811

    intel system 11.7.0.1040

    intel corp media 10.22.1.102

    black screen, non responsive, requires cold boot, nothing in event logs, indicative to me of a firmware issue.

    Along with MS Support tech. I performed an "in place upgrade" which did not make the issue any better.

    Performed Surface Diags with the toolkit, it completed OK

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  5. Barb Bowman 80,805 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-01-13T10:31:29+00:00

    You can certainly try the Surface Diagnostics Toolkit

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4037239/surface-fix-common-surface-problems-using-surface-diagnostic-toolkit

    >Is there any way to diagnose the fault without doing a complete system restore

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