Surface Pro 4 owners: Don’t install the July 26 firmware update just yet

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Apparently there are problems with touch not working on the touchscreen, pens that fail, weird power on/off behavior, and several other issues with th
[See the full post at: Surface Pro 4 owners: Don’t install the July 26 firmware update just yet]

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OhTwo, GreatAndPowerfulTech, Elly

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So how does this stuff get passed testing? Especially on your own hardware Microsoft? Maybe these people at Microsoft are all running Mac’s or something? I just don’t get it?

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I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

And we think we’re going to Mars some day? Ha! We can’t even keep terrestrial hardware working properly, let alone something that takes us across the solar system. Whoever gets ambitious enough to do it, they’d better ensure that nothing critical on the ship uses software from Redmond. ‘Cause that mission is doomed before they shut the hatch.

I am so fed up with sloppy software, and not just from Microsoft.

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No touch with touchscreen and no writing with pen? Ah, those are just cosmetic glitches… 😛

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OhTwo, lurks about, woody

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I’m one of those people that is commenting on the MS answer forum and have been since shortly after the problem was discovered and I found others having the same issue. I did most of the reinstall, reimage, re-everything with nothing helping in the couple of days before I found the initial post by ElixirHunter. I can “sort of” use my Surface Pro 4 since I have an attached keyboard which isn’t the best by any definition. However, when I was really feeling sorry for myself, I found at least one person in worse shape who noted they have no keyboard and only use their Surface as a tablet. They now have a nice rectangular thing they can power on and then off – nothing else.

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OhTwo, Microfix, gborn

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???

Assuming those units are identical, why aren’t all of them affected?

Or are they?

And haven’t Microsoft even one single user in-house to do a test before release?

Sorry, I simply don’t understand…

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Jan K. wrote:

??? Assuming those units are identical, why aren’t all of them affected? Or are they? And haven’t Microsoft even one single user in-house to do a test before release? Sorry, I simply don’t understand…

Not sure if all are identical or not but many (including myself) at the answers.microsoft.com site have i5 processors.  I’m not sure that is true for everyone but I’ve seen many post with that configuration.

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I have the same issues after the update. Touchscreen doesn’t respond, pen doesn’t work, issues with starting up the device and some weird software behavior.

Now for 3 weeks with no solution.

I should also say that I have i5 unit. It is bad. My surface pro 4 with these issues is almost unusable to me.

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Something is happening beyond the “we’re working on it” worthless Microsoft rep post from 11 days ago with NOTHING since then.  The last update Microsoft pushed out must have been an attempt to fix the issue because there is a different error message on the Surface ME firmware than there used to be – at least if you uninstall and reinstall the supposedly same firmware.

I’ve posted about the issue and included screenshots on the answers.microsoft.com site at the following link:   https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-surfupdate/surface-pro-4-broken-after-26th-july-update/db8dcfd0-e033-443c-a01f-1a62a075f71f

 

I believe this was the site that started the original article in ComputerWorld.

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Many of us are now at 5 weeks since our Surface Pro 4 had touch and pen access disabled due to the failed firmware update (July 26th) from Microsoft.  From the original forum post there has been no response from Microsoft for about 3 weeks and that post said they were looking into the issue.  People in Europe and specifically the UK seem to be getting more action from Microsoft as most of us in the US seem to be ignored when inquiring about any support tickets that have been submitted.

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Elly

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Hello, Elixir-Hunter here. Poster of original thread https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-surfupdate/surface-pro-4-broken-after-26th-july-update/db8dcfd0-e033-443c-a01f-1a62a075f71f

….and unfortunately one of the first to end up with the malware from Microsoft (I also put a post on here over a month ago).

I remember with giddy delight when I used to be able to press icons on a screen and compose and edit music with my pen (the reason I purchased a Surface £1000 and the Sibelius software £600) – I could even shut down my Surface when my work was finished – ah….those were the days.

Now I have a small, low powered ‘pretend’ laptop to which I connect a material cover keyboard to type messages on forums like this – all because I updated as instructed.

If you have read my thread then you will know that I have been a MS supporter for decades and quite frankly loved my Surface (dreamt of owning the Surface Studio one day). However, the recent debacle and more importantly the way we have been treated by Microsoft over this last 5 weeks has significantly changed my mind.

I can never trust the Surface family again so I will either have to switch to the dreaded fruit to avoid MS entirely (most musicians are already there due to this sort of situation) or as a minimum, change computer to the upcoming Lenovo yoga c930 (I know it still uses Windows but I don’t think the Lenevo touchscreens were broken by the recent Windows update!)

You would have thought with about 200 people ticking the “same question” box on the thread, about 4.5k views and coverage in over 15 online news articles so far, that Microsoft would have at least set out a statement of apology and a timeline for a fix.

Oh…well…….my nearest Microsoft Store is over 5000km away and my nearest Apple store is 5 minutes walk so maybe it is meant to be this way – time to change allegiance?

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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Oh…well…….my nearest Microsoft Store is over 5000km away and my nearest Apple store is 5 minutes walk so maybe it is meant to be this way – time to change allegiance?

Yes. Apple may give you some stability, maybe you can transfer the expensive license key. Apple has it’s dark side though… Check out Linux based operating systems, does that composition software support Linux?

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You would have thought with about 200 people ticking the “same question” box on the thread, about 4.5k views and coverage in over 15 online news articles so far, that Microsoft would have at least set out a statement of apology and a timeline for a fix.

Does not work that way, apparently. Couple of thousands people taking M$ to the court does make the difference, though. Stop waiting and do it now.

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Interesting that almost everyone who posted on this particular topic is anonymous. I wonder if there’s a reason for that?

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM

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I’m not anonymous at all. I started a thread over 5 weeks ago at: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-surfupdate/surface-pro-4-broken-after-26th-july-update/db8dcfd0-e033-443c-a01f-1a62a075f71f

and have used my tag elixir-hunter here too.

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I was trying to be helpful for my reply, what about Anonymous posting engenders suspicion in you?

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AskWoody always welcomes anonymous posting (I did my share, before I finally registered)… and we can have multiple anonymous posting in the same thread (it is nice if they chose some sort of name or way to identify a particular poster, to avoid confusion)… Anonymous posters can range from completely non-techy to people who work for tech companies and are in the know…

@Mr.JimPhelps seems to be wondering about why this particular topic is attracting anonymous posters, rather than judging specific content.

The variety of experience, and willingness to help each other are really valuable aspects of the AskWoody Lounge, and that includes the help from anonymous posters…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Ah! That position of curiosity makes more sense. There some is difficulty discerning it from annoyance or suspision, oops I have erred.

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Elixir-hunter here.

Thank you for your excellent diplomacy AskWoody. If only Microsoft had your skills we all might not be irratated with our broken Surfaces.

Anyway, back to subject, it seems MS is now admitting they broke them with this update and starting to replace out of warranty Surfaces – not mine yet though!

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I hope they can fix your Surface, actually it seems they probably owe very many users some kind of repair after reading several support related forums.

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Thank you for your kind sentiments. I hope they will fix the situation soon as I loved my Surface before it became a …. well…. non-surface and have dreamt of a Surface Studio for composing purposes.

Started a job 2 days ago at a place full of Macs and have to say they felt nice when using the Sibelius programme. Still missed the pen and touch but as I have been without it on my Surface for over 5 weeks – now would be an easier time to switch.

Elixir-Hunter

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I just got an email from Django saying that re-installing Windows from a USB backup cured the problem.

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That doesn’t fix anything, it’s a firmware issue not an OS issue.

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