Microsoft Surface Pro 3 hangs on black “Surface” boot screen

On several occasions, I had my Surface Pro 3 freeze up on me on the boot screen. When I would turn on the surface, it would get to the black screen with the Surface logo, but it would not get any further. No spinner, no activity, nothing.

The following procedure fixes my issue every time:

  • if the Surface is turned on, turn it off by holding the power button for at least 30 seconds
  • press and hold the volume up button and the power button simultaneously for 15 seconds, then release the buttons
  • screen will flash and the Surface will shut down (sometimes it gets stuck at the bios screen, just exit then)
  • turn the device back on. Things should be ok now.

Check the following link for more troubleshooting tips.

TomTom device reboots continuously after update

If you have a built-in TomTom GPS in your car (Carminat – Renault), you might experience that the device reboots continuously after updating the SD Card with TomTom Home.

The device shows the startup screen, a black-and-white hourglass, and then the startup screen again, it continues endlessly.

Two actions might solve your issue:

  • the support site of TomTom suggest you delete the mapsettings file. That did not solve the issue for me;
  • mounting the SD card on a computer and deleting the loopdir folder in the root of the card solved the issue for me, as suggested here. Personally, deleting that folder did not delete my favorites, the only thing I had to do is set my home location again.