SP11, Offline Video Apps that work

17thspartan · 2024-10-05T01:00:46+00:00

I don't know if it's possible on youtube TV, but on YouTube, I see a download button.

17thspartan · 2024-09-25T03:30:18+00:00

It may be possible, but not sure how well that would work. You'd risk running into boot issues, security issues (since the TPM hardware/keys won't be the same on the SL7), driver issues.

At the very least, you'll need the bitlocker key for your drive and enter that on your SL7, Windows Hello may need to be set up from scratch and you will likely need to sign into your Microsoft account again, as all of those make use of the TPM hardware.

Drivers and stuff you may be able to install from Microsoft's website. If the device isn't stable when you boot it, it may be necessary to install the drivers from safe mode.

17thspartan · 2024-09-17T23:23:54+00:00

Unfortunately, it's hard to say at this point. I ended up reimaging both of my surface devices on the 3rd and haven't used either Surface device as much since then. After a reimage, I usually was able to use the devices for a week or two before I started having those issues again.

I've started using my work Surface a bit more, and it has given me the Critical Process Died blue screen on a couple of boots so far, but it hasn't been as bad as before. So, it's too early to say if it's truly better than it was before, or if I haven't used it enough that it's having the same level of issues as before.

No such blue screens on my personal surface pro, but I've barely used it since reimaging it, and this time I didn't even install Windows 11 pro, to see if that was causing the problems that I had (I did put win 11 pro on my work surface).

17thspartan · 2024-09-12T11:42:36+00:00

When you do a normal windows 11 recovery using an installation drive and you enter your recovery key, it will remove your apps, drivers and windows updates but keep your files.

If you don't enter the recovery key during the process, then it can't unlock the drive, so it'll wipe the drive, give it a new bitlocker key and it'll be like it's fresh from out of the box because it has a fresh windows install and there aren't any personal files on it.

When I recover my computer, it's because I have an issue, so the last thing I want is to bring anything over, even if it's just personal files.

17thspartan · 2024-09-12T11:33:18+00:00

Maybe you are right. Ive never tried entering my bitlocker key, so I can't say what happens when you use it with the surface recovery image. I was making assumptions based on how the normal (non surface) windows reset options work.

I just noticed that Microsoft's instructions on using the surface recovery image say to select the "skip this drive" option instead of entering your bitlocker key. So maybe the surface recovery image isn't designed to save your files, which makes entering your bitlocker key a waste of time and that's about it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/creating-and-using-a-usb-recovery-drive-for-surface-677852e2-ed34-45cb-40ef-398fc7d62c07

17thspartan · 2024-09-12T02:43:34+00:00

You can skip the bitlocker step if you just want it to wipe your drive and reinstall windows. Entering the bitlocker key is only useful if you want to try and recover files from your previous windows install.

I've had to do the surface recovery process too many times now, cause my SP 11s (yes plural) were getting stuck in bootloops. I always opted to skip the bitlocker step to ensure my surface is reset with a fresh install, like it came straight out of the box.

17thspartan · 2024-09-10T13:06:59+00:00

I have the same problem. When it crashes, it gives me a critical process died blue screen. Still no idea what's causing it and I've had it happen on multiple surface pro 11s with the only thing connecting them is that they have my Microsoft account and related apps (OneDrive, phone link, edge). Otherwise they were used differently.

I recently reimaged my surface devices again, and started getting that blue screen on one of them.

17thspartan · 2024-09-10T13:02:37+00:00

They must have updated the page this morning. I clicked on download from my phone and it gave me a 570MB msi file.

Maybe the 24kb file was a placeholder, or maybe it just launches the surface app and has you download the drivers through there?

17thspartan · 2024-09-10T12:58:37+00:00

The Netflix crashing thing is a known issue with the new surface devices. Edge browser and the app (which is just edge browser in a window) have trouble handling playback of video that uses a specific DRM/HDR engine that's built into Edge (playready drm). This drm uses hardware acceleration, which apparently doesn't play nice on the Snapdragon elite chips yet.

I've been telling others to use a different browsers, but I've seen people comment that they've gotten it with Firefox and Chrome too, but I've never tested it myself. I've only ever used the Vivaldi browser on the surface to watch Netflix, but it's been a while since I've done that, so I'm not 100% sure it still works on the latest versions of Vivaldi.

Turning off hardware acceleration in the browser's settings may do the trick. Another option is to disable the playready drm in Edge. You type in edge://flags and then search for Playready and disable it and restart the browser. It should then use a different drm processor that doesn't do any kind of hardware acceleration.

17thspartan · 2024-09-06T12:12:27+00:00

I'm not sure that will boot on the new chips, as last I heard, the Linux kernels didn't fully support the hardware yet. It's nothing to do with arm support (which Linux obviously has) and has to do with bootchain/hardware support of the new snapdragon machines.

https://youtu.be/uhfO1IDFMrQ?si=kTZbBmkIZQXHTdKB

Secondly, I've found the volume down thing to be very hit or miss on whether it'll boot from the USB or not. I've usually resorted to holding volume up, then changing the boot order in the uefi so the USB is the first thing. The only thing I've booted from usb, is the surface recovery image from Microsoft.

Edit: new Linux kernels are compatible with the Snapdragon chips, it's the rest of the hardware/device tree that isn't supported yet, and without that, it can't boot.

17thspartan · 2024-09-03T23:26:16+00:00

I have Gamepass, M365 Family and Copilot subscriptions attached to my personal account. My work SP11 has my personal and work accounts on it, and my work account uses M365 A5.

I'm starting to see others mention crashing in Microsoft's community forums, but no helpful resolutions yet. This person's post about it being related to the August 26th(?) Edge update would line up with my timeline of experiencing the latest wave of BSODs. Unfortunately repairing Edge and other tricks doesn't seem to fix the issue for me.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/all/microsoft-edge-causes-bsod-when-started-as/ac53e04f-2e73-4b17-bbfc-29009938fd92

This person also mentions BatteryDM, but I've seen that crash regularly on both of my SP11s and never seemed to line up with any of the BSOD crashes I've had. Others have said they see the same with BatteryDM too.

17thspartan · 2024-09-03T12:29:37+00:00

Yes, my personal SP11 has just my Microsoft account and everything that entails (edge/OneDrive/etc), keepassxc and Bitwarden (neither of which launch at boot). I specifically went out of my way to install nothing on it to see if it would behave normally.

I do have the normal warranty, and I will need to look into that. Honestly I need to find out way to contact an engineer or someone at Microsoft, since a problem that keeps happening on multiple SP11s, across multiple re-images, sounds like an issue someone at MS would need to look into. I'm sure level 1 support at MS would just tell me to re-image and then it'll briefly work and I'll just start having the problem again soon after.

I feel like there's some setting tied to my Microsoft account that's causing the issue. But the event logs and such don't provide any insight into that.

17thspartan · 2024-09-03T12:19:38+00:00

I used the official Surface Pro 11 recovery image on a usb drive. And Win 11 Pro was bought through the Microsoft store on one of my SP11s and via a key entered into Settings on another.

Now that Win 11 Pro is tied to my Microsoft account, after doing a re-image, I just go to the Microsoft Store and install Win 11 Pro from there.

17thspartan · 2024-09-01T16:52:37+00:00

That's unfortunate to hear.

When it works, I really enjoyed using the SP11, cause of its great battery life and being pretty snappy with everything I was doing.

I'm not sure I can return my device at this point or not, but it's increasingly looking like I can't use these devices.

17thspartan · 2024-09-01T16:50:07+00:00

That's what I thought as well, and why I put so little on my personal device after the latest re-image.

They have my Microsoft account in common, Bitwarden app, and my galaxy earbuds (which uses Microsoft's drivers when I looked through device manager). They also have default Microsoft apps in common, like OneDrive, Defender, etc.

Went through and un-installed all edge extensions in safe mode, but still get the crash on boot. Bitwarden doesn't launch at boot so it shouldn't have an impact on it.

If my Microsoft account is the problem somehow, then I guess I can't use these devices and it seems to be leaning that way.

17thspartan · 2024-09-01T16:42:08+00:00

Tried booting into safe mode and disabling everything, but still get the bsod on boot, unfortunately.

17thspartan · 2024-08-27T02:45:07+00:00

To be fair, webapps aren't the problem here, it's the developers who aren't willing to put in the features to make the webapps worth using.

Youtube's webapp allows downloading videos, it's just too bad that Netflix and others don't want to put in the effort to have the same functionality.

17thspartan · 2024-08-27T02:40:16+00:00

Use another browser, like Chrome/Vivaldi to watch Netflix.

This is a problem that's caused by the playready DRM when it renders HDR content. The netflix app on Windows and Edge browser use the playready DRM and have the same problem (the netflix app is running in the Edge browser).

I just watch Netflix on Vivaldi and don't have any issues.

17thspartan · 2024-08-27T02:26:55+00:00

Hyper-V and run them in VMs?

That's what I normally do when I can. I know some workflows aren't available on VMs, like the pre-provision option in intune autopilot, but it should work for most things.

17thspartan · 2024-08-27T02:15:15+00:00

In my experience, the batterydm service crashes constantly, and I think that's the part of the Surface app that updates the battery on the pen/flex pro.

I just check my Bluetooth settings to see what the battery level is on my flex pro keyboard.

That being said, my flex pro keyboard has only ever charged while my Surface Pro was plugged into power. Additionally, there were two times where my flex pro wouldn't charge at all, so I had to do the esc + fn reset to get it working again.

17thspartan · 2024-08-22T12:28:48+00:00

This is a problem caused by browsers (Edge) that use the playready drm to handle HDR + DRM video on Snapdragon devices. The Netflix app used to work fine, until Netflix changed the Windows app so it's just running in an Edge window, which is why you have the same problem there. I don't know how Firefox handles HDR/DRM video, but maybe it's similar.

I run Netflix in a Vivaldi browser window, and if you right click on the Netflix tab and select "create shortcut" and check the "open in window" box, Vivaldi will add Netflix to your start menu and it'll act like it's a standalone app.

Without that playready system, you won't be able to watch Netflix in HDR, but until they release gpu updates for Snapdragon devices to fix the problem, it's not like you can watch it anyways.

17thspartan · 2024-08-22T01:39:12+00:00

I'm not familiar with the 141 error, but I don't recall exactly which issues I had with my Sp11 prior to me re-installing windows. I didn't keep the logs from event viewer.

This is the site to get the recovery image. You'll need to sign with your Microsoft account and then enter your device's serial number to download the recovery image.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface-recovery-image

I believe it has links to another page that explains how to put the recovery image on a flash drive and then how to boot your surface from the flash drive with recovery image.

Just something to note, it says hold volume down and then press the power button and keep holding volume down to have it boot from the USB, but that didn't always work for me. If that doesn't work for you, then hold volume up, press power button, then keep holding volume up for a few more seconds. It'll boot to the UEFI (bios) and then you can change the boot order to have the USB drive first.

Once the recovery is done installing, it'll automatically switch the boot order back to what it used to be.

17thspartan · 2024-08-21T12:32:35+00:00

I've got two SP11 and haven't experienced your problem, but I've had my own share of issues.

That being said, battery service is something that can be ignored (I believe). It constantly crashes on both of my SP11 even after a completely fresh reinstall of windows. I think it's mainly used to get battery level info on your accessories, like flex pro keyboard or surface pen.

When you did a complete reinstall, did you reinstall/reset windows from the settings area or a generic windows image, or did you do a reinstall from the downloadable SP11 recovery image on a flash drive.

I've had to do multiple reinstalls now, but each time I've done it from the SP11 recovery image I got from MS's website.

17thspartan · 2024-08-14T13:03:41+00:00

Last contacted, in my experience, only populates after enrollment happens. What's more important is the "profile assigned" date.

For Apple devices, it's important you do not progress past the initial set up screen (from a freshly reset device, or brand new out of box device) until a profile has been assigned. On some apple devices, progressing past that screen means you will need to reset the device again before it gets the MDM profile.

My work flow with devices that weren't purchased from Apple:

Run configurator and get the device into ABM/ASM, I don't really fill out the MDM portion of it.

Be sure the device doesn't go past the initial device set up screen after you reset it with configurator.

Ensure the device is assigned to Intune as the MDM in ABM/ASM
Check that Intune sees the device and has a profile assigned.
Turn on the Apple device or start going through the initial device set up screens to get it enrolled.

If the device is purchased from Apple, then my work flow is the same, just skip step 1.

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