Windows 10: Windows broken after Surface Book update

I’m having a problem with my 1st gen Surface Book running windows 10, where I get a black screen with only a (moveable) cursor on screen for about 10 minutes, before the login screen is displayed and windows starts up.

This happened before, and I eventually just gave in and reinstalled windows, which fixed the problem for a couple of months until it’s now happened again. Both times it has begun after restarting to install a ‘firmware update’ through Windows update.

To clarify, this is what happens when I power on:
* Surface logo appears as usual
* Logo disappears to black screen, moving the mouse shows the cursor
* Cursor has the ‘doing something circle’ briefly, then becomes just a cursor
* Stays like this for 5-15 mins, if it stays like this for too long the computer will seem to go into standby, (screen off, mouse won’t wake it)
* If this happens, pressing the power button once (which would normally wake it) does nothing, and needs to be held for almost as long as it would take to hard power off, until the screen turns on again
* Once the welcome screen shows, if I’ve had to wake the computer using the power button, the power off slide down banner will sort of glitchily show, almost like it has been buffering all the power button presses

Once in windows, I have the following symptoms:
* No WiFi because the WLAN autoconfig service hasn’t started, despite showing as automatic. Once started manually, WiFi works fine
* After a little while, a series of about 10 command windows pop up and disappear in quick succession
* Multiple entries in device manager have problems (code 31 and not enough quota). These are: windows hello, hid sensor collection v2, and surface: pen pairing, keyboard backlight, DTX, dial detection, base firmware update,
* After a while of being open, task manager will change its update speed to ‘paused’

These are just the ones I’ve noticed, but they’re pretty specific, and are exactly the same both times this happened (on two separate fresh installs)

I didn’t check it the first time this happened, but this time I looked at windows update, and the ‘firmware update’ that I originally restarted to install still wasn’t installed, and trying to restart and install from the update settings pane gave me error 0x80070032. So I followed this guide (Reset Windows Update in Windows 10 | Tutorials) and restarted manually. On restart, the firmware update was applied before windows started, and the update settings shows no new updates

I know I could reinstall windows again and it would work properly, but I would prefer to not have to do that every few months or so

:)

 

Updates for Surface Pro and Surface Book - Feb. 13

Source: Updates for Surface Pro and Surface Book (13 February 2018) Surface

See also:

• Surface update history
• Download drivers and firmware for Surface

 

Updates for Surface Book - Feb. 23, 2018

Source: Updates for Surface Book (23 February 2018) Surface

See also: Surface Book update history

 

Updates for Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 - April 5th 2017

Source: Updates for Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 (05 April 2017) Surface


See also:

• Microsoft Surface Book update history | Surface firmware updates
• Microsoft Surface Pro 4 update history | Surface firmware updates