For those of you who own a Surface RT device and have updated to the latest Windows RT 8.1 update, you may have noticed a decrease in battery life. Microsoft is aware of this issue and has quietly issued a workaround that will fix the problem and allow you to have the full battery life potential of your Surface RT device.
According to Microsoft, the decrease in battery life when updating your Surface RT to the latest 8.1 update, the wireless adapter power policy isnt migrated for some reason. The company explains that the power policy is set to a default value that eats up your battery.
“If you updated Surface RT from Windows RT 8.1 Preview to Windows RT 8.1, you may notice a decrease in battery life. During the update, the wireless adapter power policy isn’t migrated. Instead, the power policy is set to a default value that consumes more power both during use and in the connected standby state,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.
In order to fix the power policy to the correct settings, open command prompt with administrative rights and follow the below listed steps:
- 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 Prompt to 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
This issue is apparently exclusive to the Surface RT. For those of you who are experiencing this issue, try out the above fix and see if it resolves your battery drain problem. Let us know in the comments below if you were able to fix it.
Thanks to all who sent this in!
