Don’t Install the August Microsoft Surface Firmware Updates
If you have one of the latest Surface devices from Microsoft – Surface Book 2 or Surface Pro 6 – you need to pause Windows updates for a while, as the latest Microsoft firmware can completely slow down your system’s performance. However, if your laptop is already hosed, we have some ideas on how you can fix it.
How do I know if a firmware update is coming? Check Windows Update. You can’t miss this, although you can also check your list of pending updates against Microsoft’s August 2019 firmware update list for your Surface device.
Whenever you see any firmware updates from Microsoft’s August listing, you need to make sure you don’t accidentally install them. If you’ve kept Windows 10 Home up to date since April, you’ll see a “Pause updates for 7 days” option right below the Download button in Windows Update. Hit it once and then hit it as many times as you like so that updates are not automatically installed on your system for up to 35 days.
That should give Microsoft enough time to fix the issues some Surface Book 2 and Surface Pro 6 owners are experiencing, including limiting your processor to 400 MHz – a slow molasses.
Additionally, other users have reported that the August updates make it difficult to connect to 5GHz Wi-Fi networks, which is another major issue as it is the only way to get the best Wi-Fi performance from your laptop wirelessly. AC router.
What if I have already installed the updates?
If you’re seeing an incredible drop in performance or are experiencing Wi-Fi issues from installing the August firmware updates, you have several possible solutions. Fair warning: the first is ugly.
To fix your super slow processor
Those experiencing painful slowdowns due to their laptop processor suddenly running at 400 MHz (0.4 GHz in Task Manager) instead of around 1.6-4.2 GHz (depending on your system specifications) should try to wait for Microsoft to release an update that fixes this mess. … I haven’t seen a specific timeline for this, but Microsoft says it is working quickly to fix the problem.
If you’re stranded and need to use your laptop right now, some affected users have suggested that you can perform a hard reset to fix this. Hold the power button for about 20 seconds and then turn on the system again. (I would be surprised if this actually fixes what is probably an OS throttling issue, but this Reddit user claims it works, so it’s worth a quick try. However, the throttling issue will probably return to some sort moment.)
You can also try using the ThrottleStop app to disable BD PROCHOT, which tells your system to throttle your processor when it detects that your processor is getting too hot. This may solve your problem, because as soon as he was working with similar problems , but it is unclear is whether he directly eliminate what causes CPU throttling of updates for August 2019. However, I would give it a try and remember to re-enable BD PROCHOT if or when Microsoft runs this fix.
Otherwise, you can also go through the arduous process of resetting your system – formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows 10, and then not installing the August updates (as mentioned earlier). You will need to back up your system, reinstall all your applications, and obviously restore files from the large backup you should have done before. I wouldn’t go this route if you had no other choice, but it’s not a bad idea since a system running at 0.4 GHz is basically unusable anyway. Unfortunately, it is probably too slow for you, to make an effective backup of your files, so this option may not be the best.
To fix your crappy Wi-Fi
This is much easier to fix. If you are having problems connecting to 5GHz Wi-Fi networks after installing any August 2019 updates, open Device Manager from the Start menu, click Network Adapters, select your Wireless-AC network controller (probably Marvell ), right-click and select Properties, click the Driver tab and select Roll Back Driver.
You may also need to repeat the same process for your Marvell Bluetooth driver if this also contributes to your general connectivity issues (as some reports suggest).