Surface Book and Pro 4 owners susceptible to input freezing with Windows 10 build 14279, workaround in tow

Kareem Anderson

If you own a Microsoft Surface and were excited to download the latest Windows 10 Redstone Insider Preview marked build 14279, you might not be so excited after hearing this.

Just as some Microsoft Surface owners began to peek their heads out from the dense woods of uncertainty about their product due to a massive sleep/wake issue finally being resolved, the company fires a warning shot with its latest Insider preview update that may have many scurrying back.

As we’ve continued to highlight with each release of a new build, there seems to be a see-saw trade-off when it comes to fixes and known issues with the Windows 10 Insider Preview program. In today’s release, Insiders get a handful of nice new additions as well as some fixes that should eliminate persistent crashes, but among the known issue is one unique to Surface owners.

The new known issue of build 14279 for Surface owners cause the device to experience a “freeze” or “hang”. More specifically, the Windows team details the issues as such:

We’re investigating an issue in which some Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book devices experience a freeze or hang, and all input such as keyboard/trackpad and touch do not work.”

Fortunately, there is a workaround, as annoying as it may be.

The workaround is to hold down the power button to force the device to hard-reboot.”

So, until the next build release comes along to address this new issue, Surface owners may want to either skip this testing round, make sure the Surface device they’ve enrolled isn’t a primary device, or accept the workaround and continue with testing this latest build.

The Windows team has been rather quick with releasing builds as of late, and with a known issue of this magnitude, we should expect them to fix this soon.