Surface Pro X battery "not present"

Question

This has been bugging me for a while. Yesterday night my Pro X had just arrived and I had finished setting it up. Then I notice the battery icon is empty with an "x" and a cable next to it. Hovering over it says its at 225%, and clicking on it says 100%, both of which I doubt. And so from there I tried looking for any solutions as to fix it. I've made sure my laptop was up-to-date with updates and I've tried doing a BIOS menu restart, enabling/disabling/updating the battery on Device Manager, and doing two Surface Diagnostic Toolkit tests, which both displayed everything as ok but for "Power Supply & Battery" it said "Test was not executed." Checking the "Battery Information" tab on the left side shows nothing. I also notice that when I started a test, for a split second it showed the message "Now Testing Power Supply & Battery: modern standby". I also tried downloading the toolkit for business but I get a Windows Installer message saying "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor.", which I assume means that my laptop isn't suited for the business version or something. Doing a battery report shows that "No batteries are currently installed." And as far as I'm concerned, the current version of Windows 10 is still 1909, with the 2004 version coming soon by the end of May. Even going to the article of "Surface Battery won't charge or Surface won't run on battery" where "Battery not detected" was (which was the exact problem I'm having, evident with my laptop turning off as soon as the charger is unplugged), the "Device service and repairs" redirect where it says to start a service request didn't help much. I go to my device in the list and one option below is to get help, which is what I've done not too long ago (and is how I've put so much regarding my problem). Unless the Get Help option is the "service request", I have no idea how to do a service request and I'm totally stumped. I know it might not be the worst problem but I'm worried it might evolve to a pretty bad one soon. Does anyone know what other methods I could try or what some of the messages described means? Thanks.

Also; not sure if it would help, but when checking my update history, I notice that for the Driver Update, the "System Hardware Update" is in gray, while the rest is in green and have a redirect link. Not sure if this help with it but figured it was worth mentioning.

Answer 1

Hi Nathaniel Palacios,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Community. I'm sorry to hear about the issue you are having on your Surface Pro X.

Since the device was just bought, you may Contact Support to have the device replaced. Refund and Repurchased since we are still within the 30 days return policy (if device was bought from the Online Microsoft Store).

Or if you want, you may proceed in re-installing Windows on the device using a USB Recovery Image. This option will reimage the entire device and reload Windows including the drivers and firmware. It is the most complete form of Reset and it will wipe out everything on the device so you might need to back up your files first. You will need also a 16GB/32GB of flash drive that must be formatted into FAT32 prior to downloading the Recovery Image. If you like to try, you can follow the steps provided below:

How to Download, Create and Use a USB recovery drive

To download the Recovery Image:

• You'll need a PC running Windows 7 or later or Surface Device.

1. Visit the page to Download the recovery image for your Surface
2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for

Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for that device 4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page 5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

 Format USB Drive:

• Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface USB recovery drive.

1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

Create a recovery drive:

1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

1. Shutdown the Surface
2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) rocker
4. Press and release the power button
5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) rocker
6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
8. Select Troubleshoot
9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive

If this answer your question, we highly encourage you to inform our Community by clicking on Yes or marking my post as an answer. This will help other members who may have the same issue as you. Otherwise, don't hesitate to update us so we can further assist you.

Kind Regards,

Marrion Y.