Surface Pro 4 dead?

[MacSilva]

Hi All,

I’m Mike a new member to the forum. I apologize in advance that the first post is a plea for help.

About 2 years ago I purchased a SP4 256gb 8gb for my wife as a Christmas present. To date she has absolutely loved this device. Up until 2 weeks a go everything was operating as expected until the infamous black screen of death hit her.

I have been playing with this problem daily to try resolve the issue. Following everything power button holding sequence and every hot key combination that is floating around about the issue. Phoning MS with little support. What makes matters worse is this device is not officially sold in my country.

The only response I get from the device is a backlit keyboard, nothing else. No sounds, screen flickers etc. I’m fresh out of ideas. If anyone has some suggestions please do share. As for the hardware I honestly don’t know what to do with it should it be a hardware issue, out of warranty. Appreciate any assistance in advance.

Cheers

Mike


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[toaf]

have you tried to plug in into a monitor? a long shot, but maybe it will do something.

 

[ross tellam]

I have similar problem with my SURFACE BOOK.
I can power up and all is well showing the entry screen and then when I enter the password I also get 'the black screen of death'. If I perform a hard reboot (press and hold power button for 10-15 sec and then power up as normal) , enter the password and then wait a long time (~5 minutes instead of a few seconds) the black screen is replaced by the normal screen (but not always!). This is very frustrating and has only started in the last few days. I have not seen this problem on other brands of laptops. Other forums suggest that this is a power issue peculiar to Microsoft Surface Book and Surface Pro that was first identified 3-4 years ago - it should have been fixed by now!

 

[Hard.Wired]

MacSilva: Upon start/restart, do you at least get the word "Surface" with the spinning dots animation? If so, I would try toaf's suggestion first. There are several reasons that an external monitor connection might help; some of which are:

1. It may be defaulting to an external monitor as the "main" display where it will display the Sign in screen.
2. Your screen hardware on the machine may be damaged, in which case you may be able to see it on the external monitor. This may require that the machine was never connected to that particular monitor to get it to default to Duplication / Mirror mode which allows you to see what is supposed to be on the machines embedded monitor.
3. There may be a monitor driver issue, in which case, plugging it into another monitor might get the machine to use another monitor driver.

What boot up button press combinations have you tried? I'm asking so we can eliminate the ones you have tried and suggest others.

If you do NOT get the word "Surface" at start/restart... then I think you may have other issues. Perhaps accessing the UEFI (what used to be "BIOS") screens will help you recover the machine.

Ross: There are so many things that can slow your bootup after Sign in, from bad drivers, misbehaving software that run some portion of themselves at start up, failing SSD/HDDs, etc. etc. You are going to have to eliminate the possibilities one by one.

 

[MacSilva]

MacSilva: Upon start/restart, do you at least get the word "Surface" with the spinning dots animation? If so, I would try toaf's suggestion first. There are several reasons that an external monitor connection might help; some of which are:

1. It may be defaulting to an external monitor as the "main" display where it will display the Sign in screen.
2. Your screen hardware on the machine may be damaged, in which case you may be able to see it on the external monitor. This may require that the machine was never connected to that particular monitor to get it to default to Duplication / Mirror mode which allows you to see what is supposed to be on the machines embedded monitor.
3. There may be a monitor driver issue, in which case, plugging it into another monitor might get the machine to use another monitor driver.

What boot up button press combinations have you tried? I'm asking so we can eliminate the ones you have tried and suggest others.

If you do NOT get the word "Surface" at start/restart... then I think you may have other issues. Perhaps accessing the UEFI (what used to be "BIOS") screens will help you recover the machine.

Ross: There are so many things that can slow your bootup after Sign in, from bad drivers, misbehaving software that run some portion of themselves at start up, failing SSD/HDDs, etc. etc. You are going to have to eliminate the possibilities one by one.

Thanks for the response, unfortunately on start nothing displays at all (completely black). We have tried to attach a monitor with no results. We have also tried the following:

1. Hold the power button for exactly 15 seconds, then try to turn on.
2. Hold the power button for 30 seconds, try to turn on.
3. Do one of the previous, then hold the volume up button and at the same time power up your device (should open UEFI, it doesnt).

When contacting Microsoft they have asked us to send the device to be looked at, $400 with no guarantee that they will resolve the problem.

 

[ross tellam]

MacSilva: Upon start/restart, do you at least get the word "Surface" with the spinning dots animation? If so, I would try toaf's suggestion first. There are several reasons that an external monitor connection might help; some of which are:

1. It may be defaulting to an external monitor as the "main" display where it will display the Sign in screen.
2. Your screen hardware on the machine may be damaged, in which case you may be able to see it on the external monitor. This may require that the machine was never connected to that particular monitor to get it to default to Duplication / Mirror mode which allows you to see what is supposed to be on the machines embedded monitor.
3. There may be a monitor driver issue, in which case, plugging it into another monitor might get the machine to use another monitor driver.

What boot up button press combinations have you tried? I'm asking so we can eliminate the ones you have tried and suggest others.

If you do NOT get the word "Surface" at start/restart... then I think you may have other issues. Perhaps accessing the UEFI (what used to be "BIOS") screens will help you recover the machine.

Ross: There are so many things that can slow your bootup after Sign in, from bad drivers, misbehaving software that run some portion of themselves at start up, failing SSD/HDDs, etc. etc. You are going to have to eliminate the possibilities one by one.

MACSILVA: Many thanks for your excellent reply. When I power up I see "SURFACE" and then the spinning dots animation. After that the password page successfully comes up. Entering the password then results in a black screen (although I can see my wireless mouse pointer). I can successfully get into the computer proper by pushing the on switch for 15 seconds and then briefly pushing the on switch again. After that (usually) all is normal and I gain entry after putting in the password. (I will try an alternative monitor in the next few days).

This may be related: However if I shut down in the normal way from a fully functioning screen with all apps closed I get the new error message (see below), which is an endless loop when clicking "Shutdown anyway". I shutdown then by holding down the power button.
"Closing 1 app and shutting down
to go back and save your work Cancel or finish what you need to
Task Host Window
Task Host Window is stopping background tasks C\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Update\Automatic App Update
Shutdown anyway ? Cancel"

 

[Hard.Wired]

MacSilva:

• Do you happen to use a docking station with it at all? If so, try booting it with the button combinations in and out of the dock. If you have used more than one type of dock, try them all. I am curious that it may be expecting some external hardware peripheral configuration during boot. Maybe even an external USB drive?
• Have you tried booting it with and without the power cord plugged in?
• Have you tried booting it once it has had time to get a full charge?
• Have you tried booting with a recovery USB stick plugged in? This worked on a machine I got absolutely no response from, but it required the external boot option to be on in the UEFI.

Kinda grasping at straws now. If none of that gets a response, I'd unfortunately start leaning toward hardware failure and/or SSD corruption as a reason. Maybe it overheated at some point? I think on this some more.

- - -

Ross: Let's try a few things one at a time and do a fresh Restart before trying each suggestion. After successfully getting to Desktop after logging in...

• Change your Settings / System / Power & Sleep setting to Never and leave the system alone for a day. Sometimes Windows Update needs a little time to sort out bad installation issues.
• Try doing an Error Check on the boot drive: Right/2-finger click on the drive in File Explorer / Properties / Tools / Error checking / Check. Try this without and with the "on next restart" option. If it does find issues, let it fix them and see if this helps. If it keeps finding issues, the SSD might be going bad.
• Try all of the trouble shooting wizards under Settings / Update & Security / Troubleshoot, especially "Windows Store Apps".
• Run the Command Prompt as Administrator and try a wsreset.exe command and give it time to run. You know it is done when you get the command prompt back. Unfortunately, I've seen this take 30min + on some really messed up machines. Then run the Store app (name was recently changed to Microsoft Store in an update if you can't find it) if it doesn't pop-up automatically and do a Downloads & Updates / Get Updates check.

There are tons of things we can continue to try, but these are usually my first go-to moves for the problem you describe.

 

[ross tellam]

Hi,
I received a message that Microsoft Windows was 'repairing' an automatic installation issue. Ever since then all is good and I have no problems. I am not sure what happened but I am very thankful for your advice.
Many thanks
Ross Tellam

 

[Hard.Wired]

Ross:

Good to hear! Let us hope she sticks!