Windows 10 Fall Creators Update causing serious issues with Surface Pen

Been having trouble with your Surface Pen? Just installed the new Fall Creators Update for Windows 10? Apparently these two things are not unrelated, as there are plenty of reports of folks suffering the stylus blues after installing Microsoft’s latest upgrade for its desktop OS.

As Computerworld reports, confused hybrid owners have been making multiple posts across the net (mainly Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 users) complaining that the Surface Pen is randomly glitching – it's simply not working for writing in some cases, while pinch-to-zoom functionality is failing in others.

As mentioned, this problem has cropped up after users have upgraded to the Fall Creators Update, and, at least for some folks, it appears to be happening after their Surface device wakes from sleep.

Not-so-magic touch

The problem can be cured by rebooting the machine, or restarting the Intel Precise Touch Device driver in Device Manager – which you can open by simply typing ‘device manager’ into the search bar next to the Start button. You’ll find the relevant driver under Human Interface Devices; just disable, then re-enable the driver here.

Obviously, neither of those workaround solutions are particularly convenient, particularly if this is happening to your stylus on a regular basis.

Microsoft is hopefully working on a fix for this, although there’s no official acknowledgement of that. However, according to one Microsoft community moderator on the firm’s Answers site: “Engineering asked that anyone afflicted with this use the Feedback Hub App to send in a bug while in the bad state before disabling/re-enabling so that they can get the logs.”

It certainly doesn’t look great when a central peripheral for Microsoft’s flagship convertibles doesn’t appear to have been properly tested with the latest update for Windows 10.

Incidentally, if you’re having problems of any nature with the Fall Creators Update, we’ve got a troubleshooting guide you should take a look at.