Setting up a Surface Pen with a new PC

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve been using Microsoft Surface devices for work for years now. Put simply, the company I work for is a Microsoft consulting and services business. So you would expect us to “walk the walk” as well as “talking the talk”, right?

Each time I get a new PC, I seem have challenges setting up the Surface Pen. So, today, after getting my pen up and running with a new Surface Laptop 3, I thought I should write about it (or at least post some links to the information that I used).

I was struggling to pair the Surface Pen in my Windows 10 Bluetooth settings. I pressed and held the top button, but there was no light. I unpaired it from the old PC and tried again. No change. Was it the battery charge? The Surface Pro that I had just unpaired from said the pen had 21% battery charge.

I decided to pop the battery out and test it. My battery tester’s needle didn’t move. 21% was clearly not enough. So, I popped in a new AAAA battery. Bingo! The pen’s light was illuminated and pairing was successful.

Partial screenshot showing the Surface Pen paired in Windows with full battery power.

So, my advice would be:

  • Press/hold the top button for a few seconds to put the pen into pairing mode. Look for a light.
  • If this doesn’t work, suspect the battery. Even if it’s already working with another PC!
  • If you’re still having trouble pairing after changing the battery, unpair from any other devices.
  • The device name will be Surface Pen (I have a randomly-named device within Bluetooth range that I have no idea what it is, but it wasn’t the Surface Pen!).
  • I have an older post which may help if you don’t have any AAAA batteries (and they don’t tend to be in the local shops).

Links

Here’s some links to the information I used:

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 refuses to power on: fixed with a handful of elastic bands

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 6 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This week didn’t start well (and it hasn’t got much better either) but Monday morning was a write-off, as the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 that I use for work wouldn’t “wake up”.

I’d used it on Friday, closed the “lid” (i.e. closed the tablet against the Type Cover) and left it on a table all weekend. Come Monday and it was completely dead. I tried charging it for a while. I tried Power and Volume Up/Down combinations. I tried holding the power button down for 30 secs (at which point the light on the charging cable flashed, but that was all).

After speaking to colleagues in our support team, it seemed I’d tried everything they could think of and we were sure it was some sort of battery failure (one of my customers has seen huge levels of battery failure on their Surface Books, suspected to be after they were kept in storage for an extended period without having been fully shut down).

I was ready for a long drive to Stafford to swap it for another device, hoping that OneDrive had all of my data synced and that I didn’t get the loan Dell laptop with the missing key (I’m sure that’s a warning to look after our devices…).

Then I found a post on the Windows Central Forums titled “Surface Pro 3 won’t turn back on! – possible solution when all hope is lost”.

All hope was indeed lost. This had to be worth a read?

“My SP3 mysteriously stopped working yesterday morning. (Keep reading to the end for the solution that worked for me and maybe you too!)

It was fine the night before. […]

I spent the morning attempting to reboot the SP3. I thought maybe my charger wasn’t working even though I did see a white LED light on the adapter that connects to the Surface. I tried the hard reset, the 2-button reset, every combination of the volume up and down with the power button.

[…]

Finally, this morning, I caved in and call MS support. The tech said she would charge me $30 for a remote over the phone troubleshooting. I declined as I’ve tried everything I’ve found on the internet. Instead, I scheduled app with the MS store support in Garden City, NY (Roosevelt Field Mall).

I had the first or second app: 11:15am. The tech, I think his name was Adam, young guy in his 20’s. I told Adam my issue and that I’ve tried everything. I even had a USB LED light to show that the battery in my case wasn’t the problem. The USB LED light lit up for a few seconds when I pressed power. He said the problem was internal hardware and they there was no way to fix it. Since my SP3 was out of warranty, the only solution from MS was full replacement for $500. But, since I needed my files, a replacement won’t do me any good. So, the only other solution was have it sent to a third party data recovery place for $1000! They would basically destroy the SP3 and MS would then be unable to replace it.

Talk about bad options. Neither one seemed practical. I asked Adam if he’s seen this type of problem with any of the Surfaces before. He said maybe one or twice before. I was about to leave when another guy walked with his Surface, sat down next to me and said his Surface won’t boot up. I looked at Adam and I didn’t believe this was a rare issue with the Surface. MS probably train their techs to say that because they don’t want a class action law suit on their hand.

Anyway, just before I left, Adam, did say something, almost accidentally that I picked up. He said some guy had used a rubber band to hold down the power button for about a day and eventually the Surface woke up from sleep.

When I came home this afternoon, I was sure I had a $1100 paper weight with me. With nothing to lose, I took out some rubber bands and popsicle stick. I placed the popsicle stick flat against the power button and used the rubber band to apply pressure to keep the power button depressed the whole time. I can see the USB light connected to my Surface coming on and off as the power cycled. No sign of the Surface waking up.

Came back from dinner (that’s 5 hours later) and noticed the USB light didn’t come on and off any more. But still no sign the Surface was back. My 8 yr old sons comes into my office sees the contraption and says “what’s this” and pulls the popsicle stick off the Surface. I wasn’t even paying attention.

Lo and behold! the F—ing Surface logo flashed on the screen and booted up!!!!!
I immediately plugged in the charger and a backup HD and copied all my files!”

I was struggling to find any elastic bands at home but then, as the day’s post landed on my doormat, I thought “Royal Mail. Rubber bands!” and chased the postie down the street to ask if she had any spares. She was more than happy to give me a handful and so this was my setup (I don’t know what a “popsicle stick” is, but I didn’t need one):

A couple of hours later, I removed the bands and tried powering on the Surface Pro. I couldn’t believe it when it booted normally:

So, if your Surface Pro 3 (or possibly another Surface model) fails to power on, you might want to try this before giving up on it as a complete battery failure.

Need an AAAA battery in a hurry? There may be six of them inside a PP3!

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A couple of days ago, I was having issues with the Surface Pen that I use with my Surface Pro 3. Microsoft’s Troubleshooting Surface Pen page suggested I needed to replace the AAAA battery and, sure enough, a quick test on a battery tester confirmed that my battery was indeed flat.

I went to Amazon and bought a pack of 4 AAAA batteries and was pretty pleased to find I could get near-instant gratification, with the batteries delivered around 4 hours later!

Then, Gary Quigley (@quiggles) tweeted me to say that a Duracell 9V (PP3) battery has 6 AAAAs inside:

I had to test this out so, yesterday, I disassembled an old battery that was due to be recycled and, sure enough, there were 6 AAAA-sized cells!  In the image below you can see the disassembled PP3 on the right, with the old Duracell AAAA and the new Amazon Basics AAAA cells to the left:

AAAA batteries and similar cells inside a disassembled PP3 battery

Wikipedia suggests that not all PP3 batteries are constructed in this way, so “your mileage may vary” but it might be useful when I use up my current stock of AAAAs!

?? Warning: disassembling batteries is probably not the smartest thing to do. I’m not responsible if you hurt yourself or others as a result of any action you take after reading this blog post.

Monday morning IT blues: unresponsive Surface Type Cover keyboard/trackpad

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 9 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Monday Morning 6.15AM: My alarm goes off – time to get up, drive to the station, buy a ticket and catch a train to London. It’s Monday morning; another week, here we go.

Clearly my Surface Pro 3 was having a similarly bleary-eyed morning. When I got to site, the Type Cover keyboard didn’t want to work. Nothing had changed since Friday when I shut the machine down, so why wouldn’t the keyboard work? Detach, attach, restart, restart again. RTFM. Restart again. Oh, time for a support call.

The great thing about working for the company I do is that even the Directors respond to support requests and I had an answer in minutes about resetting the USB root hub. Trouble is that I don’t have the necessary admin permissions. No worry. I would try and power down the machine. Not a normal power down, but a proper, hard reset.  According to The Tech Chat, that’s called a two-button shutdown.

So, after a power down, holding power and volume up for 15 seconds and then exiting the setup menu that was displayed, my Surface started up, recognised the attached Type Cover and I was back in business.

Monday morning 9.45AM: IT 0: Mark 1. Right. Now what’s in store for the rest of the week!

Microsoft Surface: my attempt to cut through the hype

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 12 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve watched the hype build about Microsoft’s mysterious mystery event (thank goodness I missed the build-up last week as I was still on holiday in France…), watched the news break, and watched everyone either go ooooh, ahhhh, or hrmmm…

I couldn’t stand it any more and decided that I too should weigh in with my comments on some of the comments I’ve seen about Microsoft Surface. I may even come back and add to this list over the next few days:

  • Microsoft is too late to the tablet game: Maybe they are. There’s the iPad, and then there’s… well, no-one really. But there’s still plenty to play for. Maybe back in 2007 someone asked for a tablet and got a table instead? Seriously, the device we previously knew as Surface was rebranded PixelSense last year, but we don’t seem to get the PixelSense screen tech in the Surface tablets.
  • It looks good: it does – really good. But we don’t yet know enough about the Surface hardware – if this is underpowered, or battery life is poor, or the screen is unresponsive, then it will fail, just like all the other iPad wannabes.
  • The keyboard in the cover is a gimmick/great idea/an admission that soft keyboards don’t work: horses for courses, I’d say – there are times when I use my iPad keyboard and times when I elect for a physical version – this way we get both.
  • Microsoft is cutting OEM’s throats? Are they really? My view (personally, not as an employee) is that it’s saying “come on guys, this is what can be done when you put your mind to it – stop letting Apple run away with the tablet market and design something that’s just as good, now that we have (finally) got an operating system (nearly) ready for you”. But there is an issue when (presumably) Microsoft doesn’t charge itself $85 per device for a copy of Windows.
  • This will undermine Ultrabook sales: perhaps it will, but however big the marketing push, they would have been niche anyway. Do IT Managers really have money to spend on “sexy” laptops when functional ones cost half as much? It might have killed off the Windows tablet market though, except that Surface will only be available from Microsoft Stores and online, which limits its availability somewhat, and makes it a consumer-only purchase. OEMs don’t really need to worry too much (sure, PC sales are in decline… but there are many factors behind that and mobile devices have been expected to surpass PC for a while now). And for those of us outside the US… we might not even get a sniff.
  • Ah, so it’s for consumers, so it puts Microsoft back in the game when it comes to consumerisation? Hrm Not really. On BYOD, there seems to be a shift towards choose your own device (CYOD) – i.e. we’ll give you more choice, maybe even let you contribute to have a better device, but it needs to run Windows. CIOs do need to re-architect applications to embrace cloud, mobility, big data and consumerisation – but that’s a big ask and it’s not happening overnight. Until then there’s life in Windows 7 (and 8) for a while. And laptops/tablets are only one side of the story; Microsoft is still struggling for smartphone market share…
  • Two versions of Windows, both on Surface devices, one that runs Windows RT and one for Windows 8 Pro – what gives? On this I agree, it will confuse the market. Maybe the x86 hardware should have been a reference platform for OEMs to sell in the business market, with ARM to consumers?
  • Analysts say… Really. There is some really good insight there, seriously. But now what do CIOs say? How about: where will this help me to deliver business value; what’s the impact on the rest of the IT environment; how can I transition to become a competitive (internal) IT service provider who no longer cares about devices and operating systems? Having said that, I think Forrester’s Sarah Rotman Epps is correct to highlight issues with the way Windows is marketed and sold, and IDC’s Crawford Del Prete (@Craw) is right on the money:
MSFT Surface must win the hearts of consumers before the minds of CIOs. Good start #surface
Tuesday 19 June 2012 0:11 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@Craw
Crawford Del Prete

For some time now, we (geeks, tech journalists and IT types like me) have lambasted Microsoft for being unimaginative, lacking innovation, and for being late to market. This time they have something bold, exciting and that could really shake up the way that PCs look and feel. They’ve also kept it secret and created a buzz (albeit a little too early, some might say) perhaps a bit like another company that seems to get credit for everything it does…

Let’s give the Surface a chance to get out of the door before we write it off, hey? It could actually be really good.

Now, what are they doing about smartphones?

After hours at UK TechDays

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 15 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Over the last few years, I’ve attended (and blogged in detail about) a couple of “after hours” events at Microsoft – looking at some of the consumer-related items that we might do with out computers outside of work (first in May 2007 and then in November 2008).

Tonight I was at another one – an evening event to complement the UK TechDays events taking place this week in West London cinemas – and, unlike previous after hours sessions, this one did not even try and push Microsoft products at us (previous events felt a bit like Windows, Xbox and Live promotions at time) – it just demonstrated a whole load of cool stuff that people might want to take a look at.

I have to admit I nearly didn’t attend – the daytime UK TechDays events have been a little patchy in terms of content quality and I’m feeling slightly burned out after what has been a busy week with two Windows Server User Group evening events on top of UK TechDays and the normal work e-mail triage activities.  I’m glad I made it though and the following list is just a few of the things we saw Marc Holmes, Paul Foster and Jamie Burgess present tonight:

  • A discussion of some of the home network functionality that the guys are using for media, home automation etc. – predictably a huge amount of Microsoft media items (Media Center PCs, Windows Home Server, Xbox 360, etc.) but also the use of  X10, Z-Wave or RFXcom for pushing USB or RF signals around for home automation purposes, as well as Ethernet over power line for streaming from Media Center PCs.  Other technologies discussed included: Logitech’s DiNovo Edge keyboard and Harmony One universal remote control; SiliconDust HD HomeRun for sharing DVB-T TV signals across Ethernet to PCs; using xPL to control home automation equipment.
  • Lego Mindstorms NXT for building block robotics, including the First Lego League –  to inspire young people to get involved with science and technology in a positive way.
  • Kodu Game Lab – a visual programming language made specifically for creating games that is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone.
  • Developing XNA games with XNA Game Studio and Visual Studio, then deploying them to Xbox or even running them in the Windows Phone emulator!  Other related topics included the use of the Freescale Flexis JM Badge board to integrate an accelerometer with an XNA game and GoblinXNA for augmented reality/3D games development.  There’s also a UK XNA user group.
  • A look at how research projects (from Microsoft Research) move into Labs and eventually become products after developers have optimised and integrated them.  Microsoft spent $9.5bn on research and development in 2009 and some of the research activities that have now made it to life include Photosynth (which became a Windows client application and is now included within Silverlight), the Seadragon technologies which also became a part of Silverlight (Deep Zoom) and are featured in the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia site.  A stunning example is Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ TED 2010 talk on the work that Microsoft is doing to integrate augmented reality maps in Bing – drawing on the Seadragon technologies to provide fluidity whilst navigating maps in 3D but that environment can be used as a canvas for other things – like streetside photos (far more detailed than Google Streetview).  In his talk (which is worth watching and embedded below), Blaise navigates off the street and actually inside Seattle’s Pike Place market before showing how the Microsoft imagery can be integrated with Flickr images (possibly historical images for “time travel”) and even broadcasting live video.  In addition to the telepresence (looking from the outside in), poins of interest can be used to look out when on the ground and get details of what’s around and even looking up to the sky and seeing integration with the Microsoft Research WorldWide Telescope.
  • Finally, Paul spoke about his creation of a multitouch (Surface) table for less than £100 (using CCTV infrared cameras, a webcam with the IR filter removed and NUI software – it’s now possible to do the same with Windows 7) and a borrowed projector before discussing his own attempts at virtual reality in his paddock at home.

Whilst I’m unlikely to get stuck into all of these projects, there is plenty of geek scope here – I may have a play with home automation and it’s good to know some of the possibilities for getting my kids involved with creating their own games, robots, etc. As for Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ TED 2010 talk it was fantastic to see how Microsoft still innovates and (I only wish that all of the Bing features were available globally… here in the UK we don’t have all of the functionality that’s available stateside).