I have seen a handful of tweets from individuals over the last week reporting they were experiencing some battery issues with their freshly updated Surface.
Turns out they were not imagining things and there was a heavier drain on the battery under Windows 8.1.
According to Microsoft the issue only surfaced if you upgraded your Surface from Windows 8.1 Preview to the final version. In that process the power policy for the wireless adapter was not migrated.
The fix, although detailed, is easy to accomplish with some cut and pasting.
Here is the fix directly from Microsoft’s Surface Battery and Power Support page:
To restore the wireless adapter power policy to the correct settings, open an administrator command prompt:
- Step 1:
Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search.
(If you’re using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Search.) - Step 2:
In the search box, enter command prompt. - Step 3:
Touch and hold (or right-click) Command Promptto bring up the context menu. Tap or click Run as administrator. - Step 4:
On the User Account Control dialog box, tap or click Yes. - Step 5:
At the Administrator: Command Prompt, enter the following:
powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 3 - Step 6:
Then enter
powercfg -setactive scheme_current
Do not expect any response when you enter the commands. As long as you get the Command prompt again without any errors indicated you are in good shape.
I opted to reboot my Surface after entering these commands but the support page does not indicate it is required.
Source: Neowin
