14 DAY TRIAL // The Surface Book is certainly a beast when it comes to hardware capabilities, but unfortunately, it’s suffering from several bugs that Microsoft is now trying to address with firmware updates.
One of them is causing the device not to enter sleep mode correctly, so whenever owners close down the lid, the laptop gets very hot and obviously suffers from battery drains.
Basically, shutting the lid doesn’t correctly activate the sleep mode, and we’ve heard from some users that, sometimes, instead of turning off and entering this rest mode, the device actually gets a BSOD. But the issue that many more people are experiencing is causing the Surface Book to continue working in what they believe to be the sleeping mode, with fans running at full speed and causing a significant battery drain.
2-month-old problem
The problem was first reported on October 28, and Microsoft says that it has already tried to fix it with the latest firmware updates, but it will only be fully corrected in a future update. Or at least that’s what the company “hopes” to happen.
“Same thing here. I closed the lid, thinking it was asleep, threw it in my bag and went home. Once I got home and took it out, it was really very warm, and my batteries drained down to half! Not good... I guess I'll just shut it down from now on... Luckily it boots up fast... But it would be nice to actually put the machine to sleep...” one user confirms in a post on the Microsoft Community forums.
The thread where users have complained about the issue (and where Microsoft has publicly acknowledged it) now counts 22 pages, so it’s pretty clear that a lot of Surface Book owners are experiencing this odd behavior.
Some users have suggested to change the power settings from Control Panel to activate the hibernate mode when closing the lid. To do this, navigate to Control Panel > Power Options > System Settings, but keep in mind that it might not make any difference until Microsoft’s update arrives.