BSOD - Apparently 2 minutes of the new Tomb Raider game is too much for my $3k Surface Book

Question

Really thrilled with this purchase.

Answer 1

I get this error 2-3 per day. Not playing games. Even after the latest update.

Answer 2

Hey B.C.C.A,

I'm not sure the issue is related to the game - I was actually playing it yesterday with no such issues. Though, perhaps we've differed on our settings and/or maybe your computer eventually overheated to the point where it had to shut down - I had would have some throttling for a little bit.  

Aside from the general, "have you installed all available updates", a few notes:

• I had to manually update the NVIDIA driver after the latest firmware patch by going in to the device manager, right clicking on it, and telling it to update. The firmware didn't automatically update the driver for me.
• You can do a general reinstall of the drivers via this page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49497
• Download the .msi from above and let it run, and it will update things as needed. Though the publish date is before the latest firmware, it might still be alright to run and let it see if it finds any issues.

A tip on the game settings from personal experience:  

• Make sure you use "exclusive fullscreen". The reason is: Rise of the Tomb Raider's "fullscreen" mode really runs a borderless window. This means that, even if you change the resolution for the game, it will still technically be running at 3000x2000 resolution because the window is taking of the full screen of the laptop and the laptop monitor is still at the default resolution. You notice because the Steam overlay will be really tiny and your framerate will be taking a hit.
• When you use "exclusive fullscreen", it acts like we expect "fullscreen" to and when you change the resolution it will actually change the monitor resolution.
• I was having some issues with framerate before I did that and after making that change there were massive improvements.

In case you are interested, these are my settings (which is very playable). Ignore the Intel graphics as the graphics adapter, not sure why my NVIDIA GPU decided to not show up today - definitely use the NVIDIA GPU.

If you have different settings that still run at decent clip, let me know!

****Have a great day - game on!

Andrew

Answer 3

Thanks for the tips Andrew. I'm certain it's not the game's fault. The Surface Book is terrible. Or at least 75% of them are... This is the 3rd one I've had and it'll do this with or without playing the game. Guess I have to try returning it for a 4th. I'm just so sick of deleting and re-installing everything again and again. ARRRGH! So frustrating!

Answer 4

I sympathies with you, as I also experience the BSD multiple times a day. But why would you keep exchanging the equipment when it isn't a hardware issue and most likely software/firmware? All you are doing is wasting your time...

Answer 5

I sympathies with you, as I also experience the BSD multiple times a day. But why would you keep exchanging the equipment when it isn't a hardware issue and most likely software/firmware? All you are doing is wasting your time...

BSODs tend to be hardware issues, not software. Each device I've swapped has gotten BSODs, but all have been different errors. This is the first time I've seen this one. As this issue is not one of the ones Microsoft has acknowledged, it's clear there is no software fix in sight... Even if it does turn out to be software, they haven't even gotten to the issues they HAVE acknowledged yet, so I'll be waiting years.

This, combined with their statement that the issues only affect "a small number of customers", and the feedback in forums from some users who report no problems at all, gives me hope that there are indeed some Surface Books out there that work properly (even if it's the minority of them). So, I'd rather swap it out in hopes of getting one of the Unicorn Surface Books that work properly, than suffer through these bugs for the next dozen months waiting for a mythical software patch for a problem Microsoft doesn't even acknowledge they have.