Windows 10 on Surface tablets?

Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
4
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Is anybody having any luck with Win10 on the SP2, or even the SP3? I just rolled back to Win8.1 on my SP2. Win10 was just not functional, at least on my Win8.1 upgrade.

Issues:

1. The tablet suddenly decides it doesn't have a wireless NIC after a sleep/hibernate, and it replaces it with an unidentified device that can only be identified...with an internet connection. Rebooting doesn't help. A USB netwrok adapter fixes this in 30 seconds - keep a spare USB wireless adapter handy!
2. Battery life is awful. Under Win8, sleep/hibernate life is fantastic. Under Win10, is extremely bad. I tried the fixes listed in various forums, like turn of cortana, etc. No luck. I got about 24 hours of battery life with minimal use.
3. The pen often decides to stop working, until a reboot. Finger presses still work, but the pen just stops.
4. A certain process starts consuming a lot of CPU and heating up the tablet. I forget the process name, but it starts with a W. Force closing it seems to fix it, until a reboot and/or sleep starts it up again. I only saw this issue a few times but when it did appear it was pretty annoying.

Overall, the biggest issue I saw was the battery drain. The tablet just didn't seem to stay asleep like it did with Win8. I guess I'll try Win10 again once it matures a bit.
 

ninaholic37

Golden Member
Apr 13, 2012
1,883
31
91
I have also heard that Windows 10 works even worse on the Surface than normal computers/laptops, which is quite odd because it's Microsoft's own (and only) hardware device. Maybe it is a sign that MS won't be making any more Surface devices and stopped caring about them.
 

bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
7,187
2,641
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That would be too bad if true. The Surface is a very capable tablet and it would be sad to see it go but the Zune was a very capable mp3 player and it went.....

Win10 was rushed to market and there is no denying that. Win8 and subsequently 8.1 spent several years in development with portable devices in mind. It comes as no surprise that 8 and 8.1 work better on a handheld device like the Surface.
 
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Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,187
4,871
136
Windows 10 works fine on my asus transformer tablet as well as countless other tablets so stating that it doesn't work well with portable devices simply isn't factual. Waking up a device comes down to the firmware's ability to reactivate those devices. My desktop motherboard has specific features in the uefi bios to address that issue and I would suspect that the surface has similar settings in its bios.
 

quikah

Diamond Member
Apr 7, 2003
4,176
729
126
I have also heard that Windows 10 works even worse on the Surface than normal computers/laptops, which is quite odd because it's Microsoft's own (and only) hardware device. Maybe it is a sign that MS won't be making any more Surface devices and stopped caring about them.

They are announcing Surface Pro 4 on Oct 6, so doubt that is it.

I haven't had any major problems on my Surface 3. Run powercfg /sleepstudy to find out what is keeping the system awake.