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.
Ditch it, the Surface Pro 4’s are cursed via shit manufacturing.
Its screen will fail sooner or later https://flickergate.com/ . I had one, it started flickering after the “extended” warranty. The display is useless now. Nothing fixes it. At first the flicker stopped if something on the screen moved, so I used this https://github.com/Acie1998/Surface-Pro-Screen-Flicker-Solver to mitigate it. But within a day or two it was worse. I tried a reduced refresh rate, but that did not help by then. It quickly got worse when in use, within minutes after a week of the flickering starting. A used one is just pre-accelerated to its demise.
Replacing the screen - even opening the device - is egregiously dangerous because the screen often cracks when taking it apart. Microsoft abs sucks for making a device that can’t last when it clearly should. (Not to say anything about your specific problems! It sounds like the battery needs to be replaced, but it can run without a battery as far as I know so not sure why it can’t power up with it heavily depleted)
Edit: if you’re going to remove the sceeen, replace the battery and replace the screen with a surface pro 5 screen. They sell them. The batteries get fucked quick cause the heat sink cooks them, so it’s prob the battery causing your problems (mine had shit battery life at its end too)
Here is a blurb from Reddit describing what to get (ifixit apparently sells a surface pro 5 screen as well if you want one degree better than direct China): My advice, if you have a Surface Pro 4 with an Samsung Panel is to replace for an LG Screen from Surface Pro 5/6. You need to buy this LCD cable too for that conversion: M1010537-003
You can check in the device manager which LCD panel you have on your Surface
I have one (a friend gave it to when she needed something faster) and the screen works fine. However, the battery is pretty much cooked and due the glued screen it’s a nope for replacing it…
Glad yours is usable still! Mine went from fine to unusably flickering within the span of a week, so it set in fast. I babybabied it too hoping to avoid the issue - I guess I just prolonged it till it microsoft wouldn’t fix it anymore. rip fuck this corpo created e waste shit (I use it as a comp strapped to my TV now)
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
I bought my son a used Surface Pro 4 for schoolwork. Luckily we haven’t run into many problems, but there is a known problem where the processor still runs the battery dead when it’s shut off. You’re actually better off using standby.
If he runs the battery dead, we can plug it in and it will boot, but shortly die afterwards. But if we wait ~15 minutes to charge it a little, it stays on as long as we want it to.
