Microsoft's Pro X blocks firmware upgrades for Surface Dock

April 2023 · 2 minute read
microsoft surface dock cannot upgrade

The Microsoft Surface Dock is a handy little tool that you can use to transform your Surface into a full desktop PC. Your Surface simply connects to a Surface Dock through a single magnetic Surface Connect cable.

It can support high-speed transfers of video, audio, and data, and its compact design keeps your desktop clutter-free.

Users can’t update the Surface Dock

However, not everyone is pleased with the Microsoft Surface Dock, since many users are reporting that they are having issues upgrading its firmware when using it with a Surface Pro X:

Unless you have an MS retail store nearby or a friend that has a different Surface device that can assist, you’ll need to call Microsoft customer service and have them send you another Dock that is pre-updated with the new firmware since the standard firmware package won’t work on the Pro X (ARM64 vs x86-64)

In short, if we are to judge from initial descriptions, users cannot update the firmware at all.

One user came up with a workaround:

Your other option is to return the MS dock and get a 3rd-party USB-C dock with 60W PD charging instead. I would recommend this approach if you want to get up-and-running quickly.

The Surface Pro X’s architecture is to blame

While a support page for performing a Microsoft Surface Dock firmware upgrade does exist, it seems to be of little use since most users all seem to end up with the same error anyway:

This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor.

Apparently, the culprit behind this is the Surface Pro X’s ARM64 architecture. Further research into the matter revealed that it is unsupported by the Microsoft Surface Dock.

The only solid solution so far would be to use an x86-64 Surface device. These include the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Laptop 3 as far as Microsoft’s release notes are concerned.

Most likely, Microsoft will release an ARM64 package for the Surface Dock update sooner rather than later.

What’s your take on the latest Microsoft Surface Dock issue? Tell us what you think by commenting in the section below.

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