




Surface Pro 4's Hidden Issues

When Microsoft first brought out their own hardware I was thrilled and I thought like Apple device, Windows finally will work without any issues and we will start getting Windows upgrades for free. I should have known it's Microsoft after all! I am not those kind of guys who would blindly support any particular brand without even trying out various other brands. I am not writing this to start another argument on who's the best between Microsoft, Apple and Linux. I am writing because I literally felt betrayed by the company who I have been supporting from the day of Windows 3!
Back in October 2020 my Surface Pro 4 which I bought brand new in July 2017, started giving problems which includes the Type Keyboard keys showing double characters (pressing letter P produced P7) and Mouse Cursor/Screen Issues (top left side of the screen has square/round ghost mark and cursor getting stuck there). At the same time my CPU fan was running most of the time (very noisy) and the back of the unit literally felt very warm. I take very good care of my devices and weekly I will clean them so there was no dirt or mishandling issue here. I could not work at all due to those issues.
I immediately started checking the Microsoft support forums including their official ones. I tried their fixes and even factory reset my Surface few times. But everything failed. Finally the Microsoft support person on their forum mentioned that since Surface Pro 4 warranty has expired they can't do anything. The conclusion was that the device is having hardware issues and I should simply retire and buy a new one.
My Surface Pro 4 is a Quad Core i7 with 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. I don't think it was ready to retire! Out of curiosity I installed Linux Desktop distro Fedora 34. Although Fedora GNOME desktop don't support touchscreen or camera but all my other problems just disappeared. No cursor issue, no ghost round or square blocks in the corner of my screen, my Surface Type Keyboard is flawless and there's fan noise as the surface was cooler!!! Fedora 34 had another issue with WIFI password. So I decided to try the Ubuntu's latest distro 21.04.
Ubuntu worked great and gave same results - none of the issues I mentioned above with Windows existed. Most of my work is browser based so I had no issues with applications.
After couple of days I found that the WiFi and the Bluetooth is no longer working. Practically the OS wasn't recognizing those devices. I checked several forum and discovered I am not alone. The solutions that worked for me is below -
Resolving WiFi Issue
The culprit in this case is the Power Saving mode which disables the WiFi module automatically.
Even though in Power setting I have ensured Automatic Suspend is off but after few rebooting Ubuntu disabled the WiFi module.
Run the following command to edit the WiFi configuration file -
sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
This will open the configuration file - change the value from 3 to 2. 3 is disabled and 2 is enabled.
Reboot the computer. The issue has been resolved.
Resolving Bluetooth Issue
The Bluetooth module getting permanent disabled is a bug that was reported back in Ubuntu 16.x. The same trial and tested approach works for this issue.
Open the Terminal and execute the following commands -
sudo rmmod btusb
sudo modprobe btusb
Reboot the Surface and switch on the or connect Bluetooth device. Problem should be resolved.