A surface book 2 that is terribly slow - is it due to the missing battery?

Question

So I have a Microsoft Surface Book 2 which still today has reasonable specs (8th gen i7 CPU, Nvidea GTX 1050 graphics card, and 16 GB memory), although it is above 3 years old. Unfortunately it got the swollen battery issue which is common for these devices, so when the screen started to come unglued from the frame because of a bulging battery, I shut it down permanently, and purchased a Dell XPS 17 instead for my main laptop workstation, and since then I have left the Surface alone for a few months.

Now this week I got scared of the fire-hazard of the battery, and at the same time got curious if I still could get some decent computing out of the Surface while having it plugged in, if I just removed the swollen battery without installing a new one. So I searched online, including on this site, and from all indications I should be able to run the Surface effectively as a stationary PC, with somewhat full functionality and performance.

So I took the thing apart and removed the battery in the "tablet-part-unit" - this took a lot of time (because the device is very much glued together - iFixit gives it only 1 out of 10 on the repairability scale, but I eventually succeeded in removing the battery, and I have stored it in my charcoal grill outside, just in case it should burst out in flames suddenly, until I get time to deliver it for recycling. The keyboard base still has its 2nd battery in it - it too wont charge, but its not swollen so I keep it in there for now.

So then I reassembled the surface, and did a full reset/reinstall of the device. After reinstalling and downloading all available Windows updates, the device is still extremely slow, and the Graphics card in the base isn't even detected. I have also searched for more proper drivers for the internal devices, but this solved nothing. It works I guess, but It's just extremely slow - it takes about 5-10 seconds for it the scroll through the Device Manager tree-view of devices. Some devices (Surface ME, Surface System Aggregator, Surface Touch, Surface UEFI, Surface Camera Front) report STATUS_DEVICE_POWER_FAILURE or "There is not enough power to complete the requested operation".

So here's my question: will buying a new battery solve anything? Or is there a good tool that can diagnose why my Surface is extremely slow? Are these devices engineered only to work if the battery is present?

I tried running the Surface diagnostics tool, but it merely reported that all is good, except the fact that it's low on battery on some devices - which obviously is not something I can improve at the moment, without buying a new battery. But I don't want to spend money on a new Surface battery, unless this actually can help the situation.

Your tips/suggestions to revive this device to its (potentially battery-less) glory, anyone?

Answer 1

Ok, some news on this after spending another day with the device. Apparently one problem has been that the tablet unit wasn't very well attached to its base dock. So I detached the base manually (because I can't do it with the button, as the tablet unit has no battery). But turning the unit on while it's detached gave the same horrible performance. But then when I reattached the base unit (attached it in the opposite direction - 180 degrees), and I pressed it firmly in place, the Surface Book 2 started running fast again - startup takes less than 5 seconds, and running YouTube videos without hiccups. I suspect that the detach button has been pressed, and that has attempted to separate the two units, but only made it half way because of the missing battery - and this may have hindered the two parts reconnecting properly.

But it is somewhat troubling that the tablet unit will not run well on its own, with the base detached. But will a new battery solve this problem? It actually might, I guess... but at least I got a great performing unit, although it's somewhat stationary. This is better than having a thousands-of-dollars-worth-paperweight, so I'm happy about this result.

I will update if I get around to replace the battery, and if that makes an impact on the tablet performance, when detached.