Surface Book 3: Feb. 2022 firmware update may brick device

[German]Owners of a Microsoft Surface Book 3 should be careful installing a Feb. 2022 firmware update on these devices at the moment. I have information that the combination of certain firmware updates can lead to real issues and bricks a device (device no longer boots, drives disappear).


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I don't really follow the information about firmware updates for the Surfaces anymore – but had noticed that German blogger Martin Geuß reported about corresponding updates in the article Firmware-Updates für Surface Book 3 und LTE-Version des Surface Pro 8. However, there are serious issues for some users, Susan Bradley recently pointed it out on Askwoody – Barb Bowman noticed that because she is frequently within the Surface forums.  

Surface Book 3: Firmware-Update bricks device

Someone on Twitter also points out the problem (see above tweet). On Microsoft Answers, there is this thread in the Surface forum from February 4, 2022, which refers to the Surface Book 3.

No disks after firmware update

I also had this combination of 2 firmware updates (13.101.140.0 and 13.0.1889.2 sounds right) last night, but the machine didn't boot at all anymore this morning. When I enter the UEFI it says System UEFI = 13.101.140 and Intel Management Engine = 13.0.1889.2 so it does seem that both firmwares got installed correctly.

I tried booting from a recovery USB and from inside diskpart it showed that there were no partitions anymore.

I tried reinstalling (both with secureboot on and off) but Windows gives Error 0x80300024 and from inside diskpart I get "The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error" after giving a " list disk, select disk 0, detail disk, clean, create partition efi"

The machine was working just fine before the firmware updates so "thank you Microsoft for breaking my device"

Any hope on being able to getting this machine working again from inside Windows PE? (I am not worried about any dataloss, just productivityloss)

The user uses a certain firmware combination and after installation found that all partitions on the disk had disappeared – even when booting from USB media). Windows throws error 0x80300024 and diskpart reports a fatal hardware error. In the thread there is another user who reports several devices as affected. On Microsoft Answers, there are other forum posts like here and here describing similar things. A $2,000 device has been hacked via firmware update. 


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One Response to Surface Book 3: Feb. 2022 firmware update may brick device

  1. cool says:

    A $2,000 device has been hacked via firmware update.

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