Cool Tool: Microsoft Surface Diagnostic Toolkit

If you are one of those tasked with supporting a multitude of end-users who use a Microsoft Surface device (Book or Pro) as their daily driver, you’ll want to keep this tool in your arsenal.

The Microsoft Surface Diagnostic Toolkit is a diagnostic tool that performs tests against the Surface hardware and software pieces significant to hardware operation to report on any specific problems that it finds. The tool is less than 3MB in size, which means you can store it on a USB stick or run it from the network. It works for Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface 3 LTE, Surface 3, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro.

You can allow the tool to run automated and it will check against a long list of hardware components, however it can’t run unattended – meaning it prompts for input during the testing. You can also run the tool with a command-line argument to check against a specific component or even exclude a specific component.

A valid command-line for running against a specific a component would be:

Surface_Diagnostic_Toolkit_1.0.60.0.exe “include=DualGraphicsTest,FanTest,MuscleWireTest”

A valid command-line for excluding a component would be:

Surface_Diagnostic_Toolkit_1.0.60.0.exe “exclude=BatteryTest,CameraTest”

Incidentally, because of the utility's command-line capabilities, it can be used in scripts to automate testing remotely.

These command-line arguments are detailed in the download which can be downloaded from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46703

Here’s the list of Surface hardware (and software) that it checks against: