14 DAY TRIAL // The last Patch Tuesday rollout of the year brought us a botched update too, as one of the firmware updates released by Microsoft for Surface Pro 2 tablets actually caused more harm than good to these devices.
Soon after releasing the update, Microsoft decided to pull it, admitting that some of its files are causing a number of problems on some Surface Pro 2 tablets.
After initially promising to re-release the firmware update after the holidays, Microsoft now had a change of heart and said that it could actually arrive sooner, most likely because development goes faster than planned.
“We are working to release an alternative update package as soon as possible,” an updated statement released by Microsoft for WinSuperSite now reads.
At the same time, Tim Hogg, a Microsoft support engineer, has explained on the company’s Community forums that the firmware update prevented some devices from entering sleep mode, which led to many other problems for the Surface Pro 2.
“The UEFI firmware that we released in the December update prevents some devices from entering sleep mode (and other low power states) properly during periods of inactivity. In order to release an updated version of the UEFI firmware we need to test the new version with the other drivers in the set to make sure we are not releasing yet another unknown state to customer machines,” he wrote.
Additionally, Hogg explained that Microsoft continued the work on the new firmware “through the holidays” and the only reason they decided to pull the update was to prevent additional devices from being hit by the issues.
“All hardware failures, none of which are known to be caused by the December update, are being handled promptly through our warranty exchange policy,” he explained, adding that decreased battery life and booting or sleeping problems could be the symptoms of the faulty update.