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I bought a Surface Pro 4 - Update

So I posted a few weeks ago asking for opinions on the Surface Pro 4, trying to decide if I should pick one up and slap Linux on it.
Opinions were…mixed.

I got a decent deal on one, and that’s partly why it’s taken me so long to post an update. It was cheap because the previous buyer had returned it to the seller claiming that there were power issues. The seller said they hadn’t encountered said issues in the hour or so of testing they did, and I call fucking bullshit!
Once powered off or restarted it was taking up to 48hrs before it would grace me with booting up. And usable time ranged for 15mins to an hour before system lockup resulting in either a freeze until battery run out, or immediate system shutdown, and another 12-48hrs wait to power it up again. Obviously this is suboptimal.

Part of the issue, possibly unsurprisingly, was windows and the stripped down BIOS. After turning off secure boot, turning off the “battery saver” mode(restricts charging to 50% of total capacity) and scrubbing windows off the drive like a crusty booger…things have improved. I’m still unable to restart the device, restart powers down, but no power up. Wait times to power up again went from probably 36hrs average to 2hrs average, and if I just don’t turn it off, the system is stable.

My time with Nobara on the surface has been really enjoyable, everything is just stock, I’ve not wanted to muck around too much and get attached in case I can’t figure out the actual root cause of the power issues.
As such, not really much else to report other than Nobara running well, and pretty much everything running as well or better than when windows was installed. Touch functionality works slightly differently in Nobara than Windows, but that’s not really a bother for me.

If any of you greybeard wizards has any ideas on what might be happening with the power cycle issues I’d appreciate some suggestions. I think it may be a battery issue, but I’m waiting on a hot air station to be able to open it up and have a proper look at it’s guts. Doesn’t seem to have anything to do with temps, that was my first thought but that didn’t pan out.

Evoliddaw ,

I’ve been deploying and servicing Surface Pro’s since the Pro 3, but now that I really think about it, I’ve never actually handled a Pro 4, just everything else in between.

Through all the comments I’ve noticed you don’t appear to have tried the “hard reset” procedure yet? Any time our Surfaces have gotten funky, a hard reset usually kicks them in the butt for a few months until another wonky issue crops up. Your delay to power on sounds just like some of the wonkyness I’ve experienced but moved on from after 15 seconds of button presses. Hold power and volume up for 15 seconds.

I still have my Pro 3, I also have a Pro 5 and Pro 7. My Pro 3 still gets 6.5 hours on the battery, they’re not without their problems but it’s often how you treat them.

I’ve sold and supported hundreds. I’ve only had one come back after someone was unable to follow my instructions above. I was able to perform the above and resold it the next day.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I appreciate the suggestion, but that was quite literally the first thing I tried. The first time it wouldn’t turn on I tried pwr&v+ for 90 seconds, then either ctr+alt+b or ctr+sft+b can’t recall what one it was, then alternating between v+ and v- in quick succession, all those are meant to be ways to hard reset/virtual battery disconnect

away2thestars ,
@away2thestars@programming.dev avatar

Mine after one hour of usage starts flickering the screen…

uralsolo ,

I don’t remember which Surface I have, but power issues are the biggest bugbear that have followed me with it the entire time I’ve had it. Firstly chargers for the thing are really fucking sketchy - if it’s not in basically perfect, out-of-the-box condition it simply refuses to connect. And even if the little indicator light turns on that doesn’t mean that the bios “sees” it, which is pretty annoying.

Lately it’s been doing this thing where when I try to wake it up from sleep it takes about a full minute to turn the screen on. This wasn’t an issue until like a week ago, I’ve tried updating everything, reverting back to windows/stock settings - nothing.

Nowadays my surface is just a second screen on my desk that I use to run Stremio, because it just can’t handle anything else - and this is after me being pretty positive on it for most of the time I’ve had it. I guess I’ve had it for a few years, but damn if it wasn’t such a compact design I could probably swap out the power supply or something.

const_void ,

These things are totally unrepairable. Had one at work that needed an NVME upgrade. You have to melt the glue holding the glass screen in place to get to it.

kale ,

Seriously? I was looking at a Surface product recently, and it appeared to have an access panel for the NVME drive. I read a ton of complaints about the dimensions of the drive being unusual, but access to it was easy. I don’t think I was looking at a Surface pro though.

If a surface pro wants to be a full OS and not a tablet OS, it should be easy to replace the storage device.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I am very well aware of the nightmare ahead of me with regards to opening the thing. I’m not even going to attempt it before my new hot air station arrives

MasterNerd ,
@MasterNerd@lemm.ee avatar

Surfaces are notoriously hard to repair so good luck

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I mean, if I fuck it up irreparably…I’m out less than £100. I spend that taking my wife out on a date night. I bought it to play around with. It’s just a bit more of an involved game than I had thought I’d bought a ticket for…

Interstellar_1 ,
@Interstellar_1@pawb.social avatar

Did you get the touchscreen working on yours? I couldn’t get it working with mine

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

Yep, worked out of the box with the linux-surface kernel. Worked in grub, before I had booted Linux for the first time.

fkn ,

You couldn’t pay me to use this…

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I mean…if I had enough money I’m pretty sure I could…

HappyFrog ,

I have a surface go 3 and it actually works pretty well, especially with the custom linux-surface kernel.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

Other than the weirdness with power cycling, the thing’s is a pleasure to use. I run a flavour of Arch(btw) on my desktop now, but for quite awhile I used Fedora so Nobara feels comfortable. Just wanna figure out the weirdness so I can do stuff like restart the damn thing so flatpack updates work properly.

beirdobaggins ,

I have some strange power issues with my laptop that may have a similar cause.

I put an additional drive in my work laptop so I could debian for work without nuking the system drive.

Shutting down usually always works properly but rebooting gets stuck sometimes. It’s like it gets to the bottom of the reboot cycle and loses the ability to say “okay boot back up now”. On my laptop, it’s obvious that it is still on because of the light on the power button. I hold it down for about 12 seconds until it goes off and then I can power it back on.

I wonder if your surface is doing a similar thing where it is still powered on but not booted. You might try hiding the power button down for about 15 seconds and then hitting it again when it’s in this state.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

:'( I wish, unfortunately no amount of button holding helps. I’ve tried all the different button combos to get it to boot. At least the time to reboot is getting shorter. Not usably shorter, but better than several days!

HouseWolf ,

I’m gonna highjack this post to ask what’s a good lightweight DE for touchscreen devices?

My dad is currently using my old Surface Pro 3 I slapped Ubuntu LTS on, Gnome works great for touch but it’s abit sluggish on the hardware. Also I couldn’t get touch screen scrolling to work on Firefox.

redcalcium ,

Also I couldn’t get touch screen scrolling to work on Firefox.

Are you using wayland or X11? If it’s wayland, are firefox running under native wayland mode, or xwayland mode (check about:support to confirm).

HouseWolf ,

No idea, It uses whatever Ubuntu 22 defaulted to I believe.

I’ll check next time I can, Thank you.

redcalcium ,

I believe Firefox running under native Wayland mode should have touch input support enabled, but I can’t personally test it myself because I have no laptop or desktop with touchscreen display.

meekah , (edited )
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve recently switched to pop_os so I’m a bit new. I tried a few different things to get firefox to stop using xwayland. I want it to use wayland to actually utilize accelerated video decode.

I added a MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 variable to my ~/.profile, and I tried adding this and some additional environment variables to the .desktop file that launches firefox. I can’t find the post or the file anymore, I just remember at least one variable was not firefox specific, so it was suggested to launch firefox in an environment with those variables set, to prevent messing with other things. Do you have any other ideas on what to check to get firefox to actually run in wayland?

redcalcium ,

I simply added MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 to ~/.config/environment.d/envvars.conf and gnome picked it up after restart. Just confirm that there is no mention of xwayland afterward in firefox’s about:support.

meekah ,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe I added it in the wrong spots with the things I already tried. I’ll add it there as well and report back. Either way, thanks a lot for the reply! :)

edit: I don’t have an environment.d in my .config

redcalcium ,

Just manually create the folder if it’s not already exist (it also didn’t exist on my fresh installation either).

meekah , (edited )
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Right, idk why that didn’t occur to me lmao

edit: still giving me xwayland as window protocol on about:support :(

edit 2: NEVERMIND! It worked! I had to reboot, not just relog. Thanks!

redcalcium ,

Glad it worked out!

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I would highly recommend the stock Nobara install, it’s running Gnome with custom settings.

nobaraproject.org

Comes preinstalled with the linux-surface kernel extensions.

Lemmchen , (edited )

Haven’t tried it yet, but Plasma Mobile?

fuggadihere ,

I also had people not praising them at work .

Back then it was Surface Pro 8s and Surface Book 3s They throttled a lot due to temp issues.

BrianTheeBiscuiteer ,

All I know is that I bought my wife a Surface Pro 3 and it had to be replaced TWICE for the same exact issue. One of the times I was at the Microsoft store I even overheard another person with the same issue.

brax ,

I work with a company who distributes a mix of surface pro and Lenovo Yoga laptops. Right now they’re on Surface pro 7s.

I’ve yet to hear anything good about them over the years and models we’ve handed out. Most of the guys with them call us back to get a Yoga instead.

Zron ,

Microsoft has a terrible track record with hardware.

About the only hardware they’ve ever sold that didn’t crap the bed was the Xbox, Xbox one, and Xbox series whatever the fuck.

The 360 would cook itself, instead of fixing it, they added red LEDs to tell you it was fucked. The windows phones were unresponsive and unimpressive garbage, and every tablet they’ve made has been mired in various hardware and screen issues.

It’s almost like a software company that has a business model that depends on selling people regular updates, can’t get its head around the idea that hardware should just work for the task it’s designed to do. They want you to buy a new tablet every year or two, because it makes them money. They don’t really care if the battery is going to cook itself in 5 years, when the plan is you’ll buy a new device in 2 years, because you really need to edit PowerPoint™ presentations while on the train and with a touchscreen.

EinfachUnersetzlich ,

Their mice and joysticks used to be top notch.

brax ,

Aw man, the Intellimouse with the horizontal scrolling, and the Sidewinder joysticks… 🤌

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

With the stock windows install I’d agree, after slapping Linux on this bad boy slap no issues…well…other than the ones that I already mentioned

redcalcium ,

Two hours to power on? Did I read this right? What happen during this long power up sequence? Is it stuck on POST, bootloader or kernel load?

SturgiesYrFase OP , (edited )
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

As in it won’t post, no power to the screen, keyboard, anything. No fan spin. Regardless of charge level in the battery. And it’s more like having to wait two hours before it deigns to respond to pressing the power button.

Edit: the other possible causes could be a failing power button, or a failing pms/bms or whatever it’s using

signalsayge ,

If you’re having power on issues, I would make sure you are using a standalone power brick. I’ve used a Surface Pro for work and I’ve found that sometimes when connected to the docking station, it wouldn’t power on. When connected to a standalone power brick it usually would. For a standalone power brick, I’ve used both the one that came with the Surface and also a 65W USB-C adapter with a USB-C to Surface per cable.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m using an official stand alone power brick.

Pantherina ,

Damn that sounds like a nightmare device.

Got an Acer chromebook once, wanted to install coreboot and Linux. Found out they have nearly no replacement parts, and I was not able to open that thing up.

Sent it back as quick as possible.

SturgiesYrFase OP ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

I spent about £80 on it, can’t remember exactly. And it was a “no givesies backsies” sale.

Bytemeister ,

Yeah, Acer is complete junk. Shame they bought gateway and skull fucked that brand into the ground.

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