Surface Pro 7+ fan noise after re-install from clean MCT install - silent with old Recovery image

Question

I have a brand new Surface Pro 7+ i7 and its fan was silent out of the box, but factory image was older Windows 10Pro 20H2.

Rather than going through a lengthy update process I decided to do a fresh clean USB install with the official Media Creation tool MCT Windows 10 Pro 22H2. As with every other laptop the install was fast and the laptop installed instantly some 50+ drivers, firmwares etc. without any trouble and so did the latest monthly cumulative update, .Net and antivirus update.

Now the fan of the Surface won't turn off at all. Even with zero data traffic and idling at CPU load 0-2% the fan is on a low speed, still very audible and the surface case temperature is warm by the touch so from my judgement the device is right to turn of the fan.

However when reinstalling Win10Pro from an official recovery image the fan is silent unless there is 10%+ CPU usage, the case is cold.

The downside is that MS does not provide recent images for most (all?) surface models, the install takes 50% more space (40GB vs 60GB) and you have to go through the whole feature and driver update anyway, leaving more **** on the disk.

In both install modes the default battery/power mode is "best battery life" on the left side of the 3 step power mode scale and shifting it right and back left does not silence the fan for the clean install.

This behavior is reproducible and noticeable for both states (clean install from MCT vs. install from recovery image) and I had the same problem with older models of the surface pro series.

Does anybody know what changes, settings, tweaks are done to a stock Win10 Pro install for the state they are in the official recovery image so that the devices are cool and silent when idle? As I wrote this is reproducible with more than one model of the surface series, but I could not find a designated thread here.

Answer 1

Did you install the Surface specific drivers from Download Surface Pro 7+ Drivers and Firmware from Official Microsoft Download Center ? Suggest you do that and then try the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4037239/surface-fix-common-surface-problems-using-surface-diagnostic-toolkit which can often fix most software and driver issues.

Answer 2

Hi Barb,

thanks for the hint.

I did not install offline any drivers as the the device immediately started to download 50+ driver updates online incl. firmware etc up to a point that no exclamation marks were present in the device manager. Also I would expect Windows online to have the newer drivers over quarterly package updates or at least I would be a bit worried to jeopardize the online update by installing older drivers from a package. However if I install the package first it could be an option.

Are there any specific drivers in the package that are not published via Windows Update?